258 Nicole Chung
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Full shownotes: https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/258
Haley Radke: 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. We are so thrilled to welcome Nicole Chung back to the podcast today. Nicole's new memoir, a Living Remedy, is a heartbreaking pilgrimage where we walk with her through her grief and losing both of her adoptive parents within a few short years of each other.
We talk a lot about grieving today, depression, avoidance, grief, rituals, how our loved ones can show up for us. The joy pets can bring us in the worst of times. As an adoptee, Nicole has been one of the stalwart leaders in our community, and you'll know why when you listen to the compassion and vulnerability she shares in our conversation today.
Before we get started, I wanted to personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. Make sure you stay tuned to the end of the podcast today to hear how you can join our book club with Nicole in October, 2023.
And for details on our upcoming summer break, we wrap up with some recommended resources and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.
I am so pleased to welcome back to Adoptees On, Nivole Chung. Welcome Nicole.
Nicole Chung: Thank you so much, Haley. It's great to be back.
Haley Radke: I have been reading all the things. You're prolific. You've got an advice column and all of these pieces in magazines and all through the last few years. And even though I felt like I had followed along and knew the story, when I was reading A Living Remedy, I read it in one day in October last year, I was, blessed to have an advanced copy and I just, I was like, oh my gosh, it's so much. So anyway, do you wanna catch us up since the last time you were here in 2018?
Nicole Chung: Sure. And thank you so much for reading. It really means a lot to me. I mean, since the last time I was here, five years. It's actually not that long. Right. But at the world has changed. We've all changed. So living remedy, as but some of your listeners might not, it's a story of grief, it's a story of loss and of losing both my adoptive parents in a two-year span. My father died in early 2018 and my mother in the spring of 2020, in the early weeks of the pandemic.
So the book I had started working on it actually while I was touring, like on the paperback tour for All You Can Ever Know, in 2019. I knew I wanted to write about grief, losing my dad, and specifically how my mother and I were both grappling with how his loss had been sped and his illness before that exacerbated by these pervasive inequalities in American society that we all know about.
And in his case, financial precarity was a factor. Lack of access to healthcare was a factor in his early death. And also there were just various points at which, other parts of the safety net failed him and failed my mother. And it was something she and I were both, as I said, like grappling with, and I knew I just couldn't write the story of this loss, which for me was cataclysmic.
The biggest loss of my life thus far as an adoptee. It brought up so much for me as well. I couldn't write about that without facing these other things, these injustices and inequalities that led to his early death. But at the time, my mother was alive and she wasn't sick, and I didn't know that cancer was coming for her.
I didn't know that a few months after starting the book, she'd receive a terminal diagnosis. And I certainly didn't know that, by the time she started hospice care, because her cancer really was untreatable at that point, we would all be in the midst of the pandemic. Right? So she started hospice care the same month that we were all asked to stay home.
And so my mother and I were separated, like with a country between us, as had long been the case. But in this time, I could not get to her. And so many people. I lost her kind of sight unseen. I mean, we had video calls, we had phone calls and texts but I wasn't able to be there at the end because she died in the spring of 2020.
And at that point, honestly, the book was like the furthest thing from my mind, right? Like I had stopped working on it when she got very sick. I was focused on her care, helping to manage her affairs and parenting two kids. Working full-time through a pandemic. Can't take time off in this country if you're supporting a parent who's sick.
And so I was just kind of juggling a lot. Like many people I think in the sandwich generation, caring for elders or parents and caring for young children will be familiar with but in the midst of a pandemic and I couldn't imagine writing about it and I couldn't imagine leaving it out of the book.
So I picked it up again, I think it was probably six or seven months after my mom died and just kind of started over from the beginning. And as, because you've read it, like my relationship with her is really what provides the foundation for the book. As I rewrote it, I realized that was really at the heart of it.
And so when you read and you experience like my father's illness and loss, we're still getting that in the context, I think, of like my mother and I experiencing that together and mourning him together and then going through it together when she gets sick. So yeah, again, like it's, it's not like it's been a huge span of time since you and I last spoke, or it's not a huge span between the two books, but yeah, everything kind of shifted and my relationships with my parents, my relationship to grief, my relationship to my work and writing all had to change as well.
Haley Radke: I had never thought of memoir being a way to introduce readers to the people that you love. And I heard you talk about that in several different conversations that you've been a part of, different podcast episodes, and I see that so clearly in your book. Is there something that you could tell us about your mother in particular that I don't know, and just an anecdote or so something to get us to meet her through your eyes.
Nicole Chung: Yeah, I mean, to, to the first part, I guess of what you just said, I think it's so important in crafting memoir like nonfiction to make sure that the narrator, the you, the I, I cannot be the only fully realized, like human seeming whole and nuanced character in the book. It's important for me to be there. I'm obviously the guide through it. You're getting everything filtered through the lens of my perspective, and I'm the one deciding what's important for you to know about my life, about everybody in it. But it's so important for the other people, the characters who come into the story to feel real and to be given, I think, the dignity and respect of that and to.
And for readers, trusting your readers enough to give them like the fullest portrait that you can. And so it was very important to me that readers get to know my parents in this case before I lost them, to get to know who they were before they got sick.
I don't think they or any of us should be defined by the worst things that have happened to us, by our losses, by our traumas. These things are obviously enormously important in who we become and in shaping us, but it's not like we all are trauma. And the same is true of them. I didn't see my parents' lives, even though there were tragic things certainly, or things that were enraging, I didn't see them, their story as this, like American tragedy.
I experienced them in our life together as so much more complex than that, and in many cases that many times as a story of love and resistance and resilience. And so those are things I really wanted to capture. And the job as a writer is picking. Since you can't share everything, picking the things that feel most important, the memories, the conversations, and the most obvious thing to share about my mother is just like her deep love.
For me and her faith in me, which I know I was very lucky to have, even when we did not always understand each other. But I also remember things like she had an extremely dry and sometimes sarcastic sense of humor. And she always, her faith in me was such that, I don't know, I just, I truly believe, like she could have somehow justified any choice I made in life and supported it. Which is rare I think, in a parent. And I don't even know that should always be the case. Right. But that's, that was what her love for me meant. I don't know, like I think about just like her overarching goal as a parent was to make me feel like I was enough. And so many of us, I never really felt like I was, but that's what I remember most clearly about her, honestly, is that it was like her lifelong quest to get me to believe that I was enough.
And it just, it took a very long time, I guess, for me to learn that. So that's one thing.
Haley Radke: I love how you portray it comes across very clear to me in the book. And so I think this is true, if I'm gonna say this, that it seemed like your adoptive parents were so good at holding you with like open hands, right?
Like ready to launch you, ready to cheer you on, support you in all the things rather than this other way that parents can sometimes be like holding you so tightly that you feel crushed and stuck. And so to see them model that for you as you left as a teenager off into the world, into the east coast, far away and lived your adulthood so far away from them.
Can you talk about that a little bit?
Nicole Chung: Yeah, so part of it I like grew up dreaming about escaping the town where I lived. I was, as I wrote in the first book, I was the only Korean I knew. I was like the only transracial adoptee. I knew if there were others, at least, like we didn't talk about it. I didn't know about it.
I'd experienced a lot of racist bullying. Like it was just, it, I felt from a really young age, like there must be more than this and I can't stay here. And it sounds depressing, but I actually think that helped me like survive until it was time to leave. Not to sound dramatic, but you know, it was really hard for a long time.
There were years in elementary school especially where I remember not a week went by where I didn't experience some form of racist bullying. Whether it was like the ching-chong chants at recess or like being called actual slurs, it was not like a place where I felt safe, that school or that town.
And so I always knew I was gonna leave. And it's true, I didn't have to go as far as I did. But I don't know, like my parents, as I write in A Living Remedy,, they're from Ohio. They were the ones in their family who left, who got out. They didn't go to college. They got married very young and they moved to Alaska and then Washington State and then Oregon where I grew up.
So they were kind of like the pioneers of their family. And I think that's why they didn't raise me- as much as they loved me and I think wanted me close by- I mean, they didn't raise me with that expectation or that weight. And even though we didn't talk about race, and we certainly didn't talk about racism, they knew enough I think, to know that I wasn't going to be able to stay.
I write in the book that I think in many ways, my mother especially, was preparing me to go because she wanted me to have these choices that due to our financial situation when I was growing up, might well have proven impossible. They wanted me to go to college, but they couldn't pay for any of it and we weren't really sure how I would go or if I would go until I left.
So again I think back to that faith and that trust in me coupled with like real questions about what it would be like for me going out into the world whether there would be the resources I needed to do that. But yeah their love for me was never about like ownership or control or living like some life that they expected for me.
They really wanted me to go out and to find my own path and my own happiness. And again, I thought that was just what parents did, but I know now as an adult, sadly, that is not always the case. I just don't think there was a lot in my parents' love for me that was selfish or clinging. I think they would've loved for me to stay at home, but understood that from a young age that I wasn't going to do that.
Haley Radke: Here's a line from your book you say: she did not think about leaning on or drawing strength from me, but of protecting me, lifting me up to her. That was what it meant to be my mother.
Nicole Chung: I mean, it's hard too, right? Because my mother was moving into a situation at that point in the book, due to her terminal diagnosis and everything. Like she, I don't know, like she needed help. And I think one of the things I really wanted to address in this book, this latest book, was that changing relationship that you have with parents, with elders, when you start to move into more of a caregiving role when your positions are kind of reversed.
I think that was so difficult for both my parents, but especially my mother to grasp. And in this country there's such a focus on like personal responsibility, what we owe our elders, what we owe our parents.
For adoptees, I think sometimes wrapped up in that is this like unfair expectation to other people have that you'll be grateful or loyal, right? But we just aren't given the resources or support we need, really, when it comes time to care for each other in a crisis. And like the focus on individual personal responsibility obscures the reality of so many systems that fail us in our time of need. But it was just so difficult. I knew my parents needed more help. And at times I was able to give it, but often I wasn't.
At times they were not able to accept it or let me in. And that was just kind of an ongoing point of tension, I think because as they saw it, their role as my parents, that wasn't part of it. Accepting my help. Accepting my care even when they needed it. And I think that's something so many families have to navigate as people get older.
Haley Radke: Oh, definitely. I mean, I think that's probably a huge part of your story that was really resonating for folks outside of the adoption community because, of course, your book is like way out there. So thanks for coming back to adopteeland to talk about it.
You, speaking of that, you did this interview with Rebecca Carroll, and I'm gonna quote you a line that you shared with her in that you said: what does it mean to be an adoptee when your adopted family is gone? What does that mean?
Nicole Chung: I mean, I'm still figuring that out. I think there was a time right after my mother's death and I was obviously grieving for her. And it was, I was still at home. Covid lockdowns were still ongoing. I had to live stream her funeral from my living room sofa with my family. And my cousin, who is like the only person in my adoptive family I'm still close with, he's my same age, he called me and, at one point he was like, what is it like, like how do you feel?
And I was just like, it feels like being unadopted because not only were my parents gone, they and my grandmother had been like my very last link to that family. I have a large extended family. Because I grew up so far from many of them and we didn't have money to travel, but also just due to choices and estrangements and personalities and conflicts, like I didn't grow up all that close to many of them. And some of the people I did meet later, I think as a transracial adoptee or an adoptee, you can tell who kind of accepts you, who's really okay with it in the family.
And sadly, I think you can sometimes tell who's not. And I guess I can't really say for sure that I know that's the reason. But like my father's family, for example, I don't think ever really accepted me. And so I'm not really close with anyone left except as I mentioned my cousin. And so my parents' deaths really did feel in a way like, that's it.
Like everyone, they're gone. That means I don't have an adoptive family anymore. I am obviously still an adoptee, but, and being an adoptee is, that shaped so much of my life. But the people who are in that defining relationship, that important relationship with me are gone. And for a while it did just feel like I was completely untethered.
I don't identify with the term orphaned exactly, but. I mean, for a little while, I think that's kind of how it felt. I just felt really bereft. And yes, of course a lot of it was just grief for my parents in the way anybody might feel grief for their parents. But as an adoptee, there was this added layer of I don't know, this was my only family and like my only tie.
These were the people, the only people who really believed in that bond in my whole entire extended family. And they're gone. I'm carrying all of these memories alone. Now. There's nobody left in my adoptive family who like remembers my childhood or remembers what my, or who would talk to me about my parents when they were younger.
Like those connections are just, aren't there. So that's just been something I think that's been really hard to sit with and to live with and to adjust to. And of course I'm not alone. I have reader, people who've read my first book will know, like I have a sister I'm very close with that I reunited with my biological sister. And of course I have my husband and my own children, but it's just I'm very conscious of this other family that I grew up in, like no longer being there. And it feels like missing a limb sometimes.
Haley Radke: Do you feel like you inherited the matriarch role, or because Cindy is your older sister, are you like, okay, I guess I'm gonna pass that to her? Or you're too young to have that? Your parents lost, they died so soon, so early. Too early. And I don't know, what did you feel something when I said that word?
Nicole Chung: Oh gosh. I immediately was like, that's not me. And I don't think it's an ageism thing. I mean, I think I would be proud and happy to be a matriarch, but that's not what I feel like yet. Gosh, that's like an interesting question, I suppose like in my immediate family, my mother-in-law, I guess is who I consider like the matriarch of our family. Even though we are not, we're only related by marriage. And I think when I think about my family in terms of my own children, like that's who I think of as like the matriarch.
And I guess my sister and I are so close. I don't think of her as matriarchal yet. But yeah, that's, oh, that's an interesting question. I don't feel like I've inherited that role yet. And maybe that's part of why I feel unmoored. It's just, I definitely have these connections and they're powerful connections and their chosen, loving relationships.
But I dunno, my family tree like that part is gone. Yeah. And my relationship with my birth parents, though I'm in Reunion with my birth family is not really what I, it's not really a substitute, not that I would be looking for it to be a substitute, even if my adoptive parents were alive, but it's not at that level.
And actually my relationship with my birth father has changed a fair bit in recent years. And I think part of that is because of the deaths of my adoptive parents. But I think, I still feel even, it's been like three years since my mom's death, my adoptive mom. And I still feel this sense of, I don't know what's next. I'm still kind of waiting, to figure that out.
Haley Radke: Okay, this is gonna take a big turn. Are you ready?
Nicole Chung: Okay.
Haley Radke: Star Trek. Yay. How excited was I to hear Deanna Troi mentioned in your book. As a faithful Star Trek Next Gen rerun watcher, through my childhood. Which I've gone to try, I've tried to rewatch now, and it's ooh. I don't know. It's tough.
It's a tough rewatch for me. But anyway, so you mentioned Deanna Troi, and there's a little story in the book and I was, I just got kind of fixated on it. Oh my gosh, she was the counselor. She had these like telepathic abilities and empathy and I was like, woo, that's like us.
We grow up having to parachute it into a new family where we have no connection. There're strangers to us. We have to read the room and adjust to where we are and like get really hypervigilant about these other cues that these strangers to us are giving us. I'm curious, as with that piece, I'm picturing her as an adoptee. She's not. But those empathy skills. How is that having that superpower through grieving for you?
Because we're taking on other people's feelings around us. Your children, your husband's trying to support you, your sister is there to support you, but you still are like feeling those things. I don't know, am I reading too much into Deanna and conflating you too? I don't know. You tell me what you think.
Nicole Chung: Oh, I'm always happy to talk about Star Trek or Deanna Troi. I don't necessarily think of myself like as an empath. Maybe it's because some of the people who describe themselves that way to me, I've been like, no, you're not. But I think what you have a point in terms of as adoptees, I don't wanna say we're like shapeshifters, exactly. Nor should we have to be. But I do think there's a lot of reading the room, trying to read cues and trying to sometimes be what other people want. Of course, that's like a universal experience that children have. Like we learn very early on whether we're adopted or not, like you learn what things you say that really upset your parents and what things are okay and safe.
You learn whether it's safe at all to disagree or to make them upset. Like you, you're always picking those things up. In my case, I write in a living remedy about being a very watchful kid and part of that was anxiety, I think. And part of it was being in a place where I knew my presence was often unexpected or unwanted.
I mean, not by my family. My adoptive family, my parents, but like out in the world, in the community where we lived, this very white community. I just didn't really feel safe, as a child from a super young age. And I was always like aware of where I was, who I was with, whether I was drawing attention to myself, wondering what people thought. And so yeah, I mean those qualities, that watchfulness and that wanting to find a place or people with whom I can feel safe, that's persisted for sure.
How it relates to grieving. I mean, I don't know that I had thought about that till you asked the question. I don't know. So many things besides being adopted, went into that. Like being a writer, being observant, like making my living literally observing and remembering and then trying to listen to the story and tell that. Those are things that like I can't exactly trace to adoption. They're just part of me. But yeah, I think just the hardest thing for me to do in grieving my parents was learning to show myself grace and show myself care and like grieve without this self-recrimination and like desire, I guess, to keep myself suffering because that's what I thought it meant to grieve.
That's what like a good, loyal daughter does when her parents die. Learning to grieve without that kind of self punishment, that self-blame, that was really difficult and I'm sure some of that stems from just like the way I grew up feeling very responsible for other people's feelings and other people's comfort. Which is impossible, I guess, to divorce from growing up as a transracial adoptee.
Haley Radke: In the book, when you are sharing some of those first months of grief, both after your father's passing and then after your mother's, you share some deeply private thing, private thoughts that you, that came to mind about not wanting to be on this planet anymore and about your anxieties and things. And I don't necessarily want you to share about that because you lay that bare in the book very well and I felt so appreciative that you were saying, the true thing, so you could really invite us in.
And I'm curious if you have memories during those times of friends or other people in your life who loved you well, like what were the best things that people did to help you through that time?
Nicole Chung: When I think back to the depths of my depression after my father's death, first of all, I didn't really know that's what it was.
I thought, of course I feel horrible. Like my father's dead. This is grief. This must be what really deep grief feels like. It's not exactly the case. In many ways, I wasn't actually letting myself grieve. It was just too painful. And so I was cycling through a lot of anxiety and like guilt and self-blame over what I felt were my failings as his daughter.
Like the things I wasn't able to do to help or save him. Practical things like not having enough money, like to pay for the medical care he needed when he needed it. To like other things that maybe I couldn't really help, like where I lived, where I settled, in part because I had my own children and my own family. I just kind of, I was so wrapped up in like blame and in punishing myself, and I think that's where a lot of the like depression came from.
I don't know, like some of those months are a blur. Like I mentioned in the book. Like I cannot, we moved from one house to another in that the first few months after he died. Our rental term was up. We had to leave. And I don't remember packing or unpacking. I know we did, we live in this house still.
But I just don't remember really any of it. I can tell you about the four or five moves prior to that, but not that one. So things like that are just kind of lost to me. And that's trauma. That's, and that was a reaction to that. But I do remember of course my husband was great.
He's always been our rock. I mean, I don't think it took a loss in the family to make that really clear to me. But he was doing a lot, not just like a lot of the practical things, which he's always done, but like the lion's share of parenting.
And then, when I got to see my sister. I mean, that was very important too. And we didn't see each other for a long time because of the pandemic. But we would talk often. I mentioned my cousin would check on me a lot and no one could really do anything. No one could make my father's loss or my mother's loss any less painful. But, the people who I really trusted and loved who I could be my whole self with, who I could be messy with who I could admit, like my, the dark thoughts I was having too, that was, I mean, helpful, as helpful as anything was.
And then, I'll just say and give a shout out to therapy. I sought therapy a few months after my dad died. I still go. It's been really hugely helpful and I don't know, like I recognized that I needed that and it's why I continue to go. I started going because of grief. And needing help with that.
But of course, like so many other things come up once you start. I am really grateful, like it was a horrible time, but I'm lucky to have had the support and like the access to that support, that I needed.
Haley Radke: I was gonna- I watched you take care of your mom, like obviously not reading about it in the book, all the things you would send to her and the ways you were trying to connect with her because of Covid 19 and not actually being able to go physically to her.
And so I guess I just imagine that your people would do those same things for you. And I get it in that grief blur, like it's hard to remember and bring those things to mind.
Nicole Chung: One thing, I mean, I remember after my mom died is that I mentioned this in the book, but I was so anxious about the phone because for every, for months, like the only calls and texts I got were like, about my mother.
It was like always horrible news. And even when I was reaching out to other people for help and support, it was like through my phone. And in the days after she died, like when the phone would ring, like my heart rate would spike, and I felt like I was gonna panic sometimes. So my husband started carrying it and telling me if I had to talk to somebody, if it was important, because I like, just couldn't have a phone for a few days, few, maybe a couple of weeks after.
So my friends knew this, but they wanted to be with me and they couldn't call and talk to me cuz I wasn't really in a state to have a conversation. So they, a group of them recorded these like video condolences, just like them talking at their phone, cameras telling me they loved me and they were there for me.
And when I was ready they would be there. And they sent them to me and it meant so much because they were trying to be with me in this way that they could. And even though we couldn't be together, they also could not get on a plane and fly to me. And then I, couldn't even talk on the phone in real time.
So they wanted to make sure I knew, even though I couldn't answer the phone, that they were, they loved me and they were thinking of me. So I just remember that being like profoundly important at that time. And it's still it was just awkward freely. That's not the kind of thing you would think to ask a friend for, when you're grieving.
It'd be great if you could record a video just like telling me that you're there and I can just watch it over and over or reach out when I'm ready. I couldn't like think of tasks to give people and I certainly wouldn't have ever thought of that one. It just meant a lot that they took the initiative, they realized it would be helpful and.
They did it. And it meant a lot to me.
Haley Radke: That got me teary. See, I know you have good, you've got good people in your life. I love that. Thank you for sharing it. You mentioned earlier and you share in the book that you had to view your mother's service live streamed. I'm curious if there's, if you're comfortable sharing, this is pretty personal, but if there's anything that you've done since then, any grief rituals or things that you've done to make that more concrete's the word that's coming to mind, but it's not the right one.
But for yourself I'm thinking of the adoptees who maybe don't get to go because of estrangements or finding out their birth parent has died after they've searched, or the things that are out of our control. Just like the pandemic was. Are there things that have been special or important to you or things that you've tried to build in to have this sense for yourself of - closure is not the right word either, but I think you get the gist of what I'm trying to say.
Nicole Chung: Yeah, I mean, I don't think of the book as therapeutic. That's not really what writing, at least for public consumption, is for me. But I will say I do think of the book in many respects as like the legacy of my family and like that story, just knowing that it's preserved imperfectly, but still- that it's a place where people can still meet and learn about my parents and hear their voices.
It's a place that I will always have and my children, will always have to do that. I mean, that is very meaningful and I, I mean, I recognize too it's more than that. It has to mean something to readers. It's not just about me and my feelings, but it is actually kind of comforting that's the case because, I don't have those physical connections to home anymore.
And like when my mother died her, she wanted to leave her house from her manufactured home to her sister. Partly as thanks for caring for her. And my, her sister recently passed away and has left the house to someone else, which is of course like her right. But I don't have any claim or any stake too to what was my parents' house, the place where they lived and died.
There isn't going to be some visit home, where I go through everything and pick out things to keep and sell others and say goodbye to that place. Again, like the book is the structure kind of through which I get to do that.
And I don't know, I think in terms of like rituals, I've done things like send flowers to be placed on my parents' graves, like on their, the anniversaries of their deaths or their birthdays or their wedding anniversary.
I try to think about them of course, and sometimes I've done things like have a meal in their honor. Sometimes I've written letters, which of course, go unsent, kinda just telling them things. And I look at their pictures a lot. And the pictures I actually love most are the ones when I was very young or not in the picture yet.
I like thinking a lot about who they were before I really got to know them as parents. I'm so curious still, as much as I've learned and as much as I've written, like I, I'll always be curious and have questions about who they were as people before I entered their life. So like those things are really meaningful to me, but it's imperfect and sometimes it doesn't feel like enough.
There's still this physical distance. There's very real emotional distance from the rest of my family. There aren't these physical connections. Like I don't really go back to my hometown a lot. I can't go back to my parents' home. So it's hard. I think I'm still learning what missing and grieving and honoring them will look like.
Haley Radke: Are there stories or things that you are- oh, maybe even traditions, I guess, that you are like planning. I am gonna share these with my children in their honor.
Nicole Chung: I don't know that I think about it consciously, but of course like when I think about traditions around like holidays or birthdays or even the way, like I try to talk with my kids or be available emotionally and all of that.
Like so much of that is based on how I was raised. I guess the fact that like the only vacations we ever took as a family were to the Oregon coast, and it's partly because we couldn't actually afford to go anywhere else, but it's also because it was like our favorite place. And it was a really special place to my mom and me especially.
So like I do wanna take my kids out there again. They've been before, but also just like going to the beach or beaches that are closer to us. That's kind of like a special place for my family. I don't know, we got a dog and my mother always loved dogs. Just had a very special connection with them, including her last dog Buster who was like faithfully at her side, like all during her illness and even as she died.
In a way I think about us having a dog that we love, who's a real comfort to the whole family is this extra connection to my mother. Just I dunno, I think it's something she would've understood and been really happy about. So there are some things, but mostly it's like everything in life.
There's a part in the book where I write that like to live is to remember them. And it's true, like everything I do in and with and for my family, but also beyond that is, is part of what it means to love and to miss and to grieve them. And it's what they would've wanted from my life to go on, and for me to find contentment and fulfillment and like meaning and joy and all these things despite these losses.
So I think of my whole life in some sense as like an extension or honoring them, like being what they really wanted for me. And it's kind of lovely actually that I get to do that without the pressures. Some people feel, right. Of feeling they have to live up to something or accomplish something or achieve something, to really honor their family.
I know, like I'm un I'm under no illusions about like my parents' expectations in that regard. They just wanted me to live and be happy and have my own family and, love them. So that's kind of what I'm carrying forward.
Haley Radke: I have the photo of you and your mom up on my screen because I was just double checking the time article. One of the ones that you wrote. It was one you wrote while you were deciding whether or not to visit her and you were expressing that in the article. We can link to that. And so I, I see her face as we're talking and there's a pup in that picture. And I, I noted in the book you're mentioning Sebastian, your cat and your mom's dog Buster. And then your new little friend, Peggy. God, what a....
Nicole Chung: Peggy is not so little anymore.
Haley Radke: No. One more reason to follow on Instagram is Peggy. Yeah. But in your book launch, which I attended virtually, someone made sure to ask what happened to Buster? There's this importance for us of animals and we actually recently did an episode on adoptees and grief around losing our pets.
But I'm wondering, you mentioned your mom's love of animals. How has that been for you, having Peggy in your life and seeing your children really enjoy connecting with Peggy as well?
Nicole Chung: Yeah, I mean, I sometimes joke that I don't think my mental health should be so dependent on the dog or anything else that's mortal. But no she's been like so good for our family. So we, like many people, we got our dog in the, like during the pandemic. She's very much a pandemic pup. We got her about six months after my mother had passed and, you all remember like the fall and winter of 2020, like nobody was doing, maybe you hadn't suffered a deep personal loss, but like no one was thriving.
I didn't know anybody who was like genuinely happy and we were facing down this long pandemic winter where we weren't vaccinated and we still really weren't seeing people and it was grim. Okay. Even if my mother hadn't died, I was just like, I know a dog does not magically fix anything. I know grief is just something you live with.
But at the same time, like honestly, I just felt like we really needed a win. We needed something really good to happen. So that was Peggy and she demanded all our focus in the way dogs often do at the beginning. Especially like just meeting her basic needs and learning how to take care of her. Kinda like having a newborn, but like only for a few weeks.
I don't know. It was just like a new place to put all that energy, right? But she is, she like quickly became the emotional center of the family. My kids, my kids immediately felt happier. Like I could see real joy on their faces for the first time. And more than that, like I could actually feel that, like I could access it.
And I mentioned in the book how, like for months after my mom died, I always felt like if I was viewing someone else's joy or happiness, it was like through a glass. It was something about, it wasn't quite reaching me, like I could see it, but I couldn't feel it. And Peggy crashed through that glass, that wall.
And I really felt like I could feel joy again very deeply. And seeing, experience it with my kids for the first time since her death. So yeah, it's, I don't know, she's the family comfort animal for sure. She got the kids through that like long zoom school year. Like they would take Peggy breaks. Yeah she's still really kind of at the heart of the family in many ways. So we're, we are very like lucky to have her.
Haley Radke: It's nice to have some piece of joy while you are still moving through. I just, I don't know. The more we've talked before, like adoptees are just experts in grief. There's just not this endpoint, but as our life grows around our grief, you know that diagram that everybody shows. There's gotta be Instagram reels about it or something. I know I've seen like all the circles and my therapist too has drawn them out for me.
As our life grows around our grief and incorporates, it's just like somehow coming back to some sense of normalcy and I kind of breathe this sigh of relief when you said it's been three years because preparing to interview you, this grief of your loss of your mother is like raw to me as the reader. And I feel oh, you've had time before. You have to go on this tour and talk about this over and over. Not that it's makes it that much less painful, but it's still yeah. How are you talking about this over and over after I've participated?
Nicole Chung: That's like the hardest question to answer. I, I don't really get nervous like going on the radio anymore, but I had this interview that I felt was kind of a big deal with Steve Inskeep at N P R and the, I was like we're getting through this. It's okay. I feel like I'm not bombing this. And then the very last question he asked was like, how are you doing?
And I came up with something, but I'll just say that is the hardest question to answer. Every possible answer flew out of my head in that moment. I don't know, it's just, it's been- tour's been hard. Like it's a privilege and it's been- parts of it have been really joyful. It's been wonderful to meet readers and to see friends and to talk about the book.
And there's no substitute for that. I really- like more than the reviews, which I'm thankful for, and more than interviews or articles, like getting to actually meet and hear from readers and hear that the book mattered to them and hear why there's no substitute for that as far as I'm concerned as a writer.
So I love that and I'm really aware of what a privilege it is, especially after the pandemic when so many people couldn't do that after publishing books. And at the same time, it's a lot, it's been a lot to hold this grief and to hear, at every event someone will often, many people will share their own stories with me and I, that's been happening since All You Can Ever Know.
And I'm very conscious too of that being an honor, but also being a lot to hold. Right. Yeah, it's been, I think. I think I'm doing okay. And unfortunately I got Covid at the end of my tour and had to cancel some events. So it feels a little unresolved right now. Actually. I was supposed to go to Chicago and Boston and didn't make it there, but I don't know, I've been, I thought it would be even harder than it has been emotionally to go on tour, to relive events, to answer questions like about people I've lost.
And while it's been difficult, I think there's been like a lot of solace and beauty and humor and community and joy in that as well. So I don't know. The book really means so much to me. I think it is the best thing I've written and I'm very like proud of that. So it has meant a lot to get to go out and share it with people.
Haley Radke: I'm absolutely gonna recommend that people pick up A Living Remedy. I read All You Can Ever Know. And we did a book club for that all the way back in 2018 when it came out. And when I first read A Living Remedy, I loved it. I read it very much with these eyes. I came away being like, wow, that was a scathing critique of the American healthcare system.
And oh my gosh, capitalism. And, I came away like angry and I think I already told you, I, I read it in one, literally one sitting on my laptop. So you must know if I'm gonna read it on my laptop with that, our copy then it's the big deal anyway. And then to prepare for today, I listened to the audiobook and I came away with this oh my gosh, it's your soul laid bear.
It's so deeply personal and I found it so interesting that I had these two different experiences reading it and it wasn't- you're not the, you're not the audiobook narrator. And for me that made it a little bit easier cuz hearing it in your voice, I think I would've like really been broken and I felt thankful that you didn't have to read it.
Some piece, I don't know if you have a comment on that or not, but I was like, oh my gosh, if you'd had to read this out loud to us, I don't know if we could have bear, just beared with it.
Nicole Chung: I don't have that much faith in my performance skills. Like I haven't read either of my books, although I will say, like I, I think I'm a decent reader of my own work, but in short form. I enjoy like reading in public speaking. I did like theater a little bit in high school, so like I'm not afraid of it. And I I like to read aloud with my kids even though they're old and they don't need me to read aloud to them anymore. But I enjoy doing the voices. I think I do a good job reading. I don't know that I could have read either of these books, like to my satisfaction.
So I was kind of happy to outsource that and. It is kind of interesting. I, so I love the audiobook of A Living Remedy. I think Jennifer Kim does a beautiful job with it.
Haley Radke: Amazing.
Nicole Chung: She doesn't sound like me, but of all the readers, I just, I listen to different samples and everybody's very talented. But I was really hoping she'd be available because like her sample was my favorite.
I don't know, it is always really strange listening to your words and your life, but not in your voice, but I think you're right. And it hadn't occurred to me till you said it, that having that separation, I guess it might have been like beneficial to me as well. I didn't think I was shying away from having to read it out loud by choosing a different narrator.
But of course, like it would've been a difficult very emotional thing to do my own audiobook. I really do recommend the audiobook. I think it's, I think Jennifer did such a wonderful job with it and it doesn't surprise me that hearing it read aloud, and also just encountering it a second time, months later, you'd have a different experience of it.
I think that's actually kind of, I'll take it as a compliment because I think that's how books can reach us at different stages for different reasons and leave us with different thoughts and impressions. So I know like I always love like revisiting favorite books and I always get something different like every time I do.
So yeah, that, that part does not really surprise me that the experience for you was different.
Haley Radke: I remember going into reading it and already being mad about the situation, right? Because I'm like, oh my God, you didn't get to go to the funeral. I knew the story, like I knew it had as much as you can just know facts.
So that's how I went in and that's what I experienced. That's what I read. And so now I'm just like, oh my gosh, I wanna hug you. I'm just like so yes. It's amazing. I loved All You Can Ever Know. A Living Remedy is just you, as just a much like- . Okay. I feel like I'm gonna say this and it's some, I don't mean it at in any way as an insult to All You Can Ever Know, because it was so good.
This is just so good. Like it's just elevated. You're writing, everything is just amazing. I can, I know why it's all on the best of book lists everywhere.
Nicole Chung: Very good publicist as well.
Haley Radke: No. Shade to your publicist, but also just it's amazing. It's amazing.
Nicole Chung: Thank you. I mean, one of the nicest things, one of the best compliments I think a writer can get is: you've improved. I love that people always think I'll take it the wrong way and I never do. Like I'm truly thrilled. I also think it's true and I also. Some of it's like agent experience, but also just what I had to give to this book emotionally. Like what it demanded of me. The fact that I was five years older and had finally learned to give myself more grace and to be more patient with myself and acknowledge my limitations.
Like all these things, I think just made it a much, I think it's a much better book. And that I love my first book too. It'll always mean a lot to me, but I do feel like A Living Remedy is like a different kind of flex for me as a writer. And it also just pushed and challenged me in ways that no other piece of writing ever has.
So it changed so much in the writing and in the rewriting that, yeah. That is why I think that I'm so proud of it, is just it I've said it before. It's like my whole heart. That's really what it required of me.
Haley Radke: And we are thankful to receive your whole heart. Okay. In 2018, you were here. I. You said to me, one of my wishes is to edit and publish an anthology of adoptee authors.
What do you wanna recommend to us today, Nicole?
Nicole Chung: I had love to recommend an anthology I co-edited of fellow adoptee authors.
Haley Radke: Yes, I know.
Nicole Chung: It's young adult fiction. So every, all short stories, every story is by an adoptee of color featuring like an adopted teen protagonist. And my co-editor is the wonderful Shannon Gibney, who probably your listeners will be familiar with.
Have you talked with Shannon before?
Haley Radke: Yes. She's been on our book. She's the one repeat book club author Until you Okay. You're gonna be the second one. How about that? Yeah.
Nicole Chung: Okay. So this is a high honor. So your listeners will know all about Shannon and her wonderful books. But yeah, this is kind of just a labor of love and we were connected by a mutual friend, Sarah Park Dahlen actually who is a not an adoptee, but a scholar in the field of like children's literature who's really knows so much about like adoptee literature especially.
And Sarah had been like encouraging Shannon and me and probably other people too, to pay attention to the space of children's lit and literature for young people because there's- as diverse as it is, I think as it's gotten so much better than it was when I was a kid. I mean, adoptee stories by adoptees are still so few and far between, and many of the portayals that exist by non adoptees, like, how do I say this? They aren't great.
And so there's definitely a vacuum to fill. And even though Shannon and I both had books coming out this year, and so it was like not the greatest like time for us. We, again, it just felt like a passion project. So we put out a call. A lot of writers we knew and many we didn't sent in stories for consideration and we managed to winnow it down.
So this collection is called When We Become Ours, and it's coming out at the end, toward the end of October of this year. So we're both really excited about it and hope people keep an eye out for it. It just, it's just so special to get to do this and we hope it is the book for a lot of adoptee, but particularly teens, that we didn't have when we were growing up.
And I'm personally hoping every one of our contributors writes their own standalone books. Some of them already have, I should say. But I hope everyone else does because like it's just such a deep, rich well of storytelling and we need so many more stories. Our kids, like young adoptees, need so much more. So we hope this is not an end, but like kind of a beginning and the first of many more like it.
Haley Radke: It is tremendous. I am honored again to have been received a advanced copy and just loved it. We have talked to, you have heard from so many of the authors already have appeared on adoptees on, you're gonna be so excited to read this.
So I'm so glad you're recommending it to us. We will all advance order today when we've heard this. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming back to the show. Thank you so much for your work and I'm so honored that we get to, we had to get to have this conversation. Where can we connect with you online and find A Living Remedy?
Nicole Chung: You can find A Living Remedy wherever books are sold. I especially love if you would like to order from your local or favorite independent bookstore. And yeah. So I mean there's that. And then in terms of finding me, I am, against my better judgment, still on Twitter. So Nicole SJ Chung same handle on Instagram.
I'm on Blue Sky as Nicole Chung giving that one a whirl. So you can find me there for now. And my website is nicolechung.net.
Haley Radke: Wonderful. It's got all your events coming up so folks can still, if you're listening when this comes out, there's still things coming up this year. So we hopeful get a chance to meet you in real life at one of your book talks.
Thanks you so much, Nicole.
Nicole Chung: Thanks Haley.
Haley Radke: I am so excited that Nicole will be joining us for our book club number two with her. We are going to be reading and discussing A Living Remedy in October of 2023. Nicole will join us for a live Zoom discussion and details and dates and all of those things are to come adopteeson.com/book club. Our book club is for Patreon supporters. So those are folks who contribute to the cost of writing Adoptees On. Did you know it is listener supported?
So we would love to have you join us over there, adopteeson.com/book club and we are really thrilled to be able to do this. We also have our book club recording way back when we did All You Can Ever know, and that's available on Patreon as well. I'm really thankful for the generosity of our patrons who make all of this possible.
So I wanna leave you with two things. One, a tear up because we're going on summer break and I didn't realize I would be emotional about it. I still truly love making this show for you. And in order to be sustainable, I take a full summer off to be with my kids and get excited about the fall and recording again.
And I'm listening to myself and I'm like, oh yeah. I'm really glad I still love it because that means we're gonna keep going. So this is our last episode, you will hear until mid-September of 2023. We'll be back with amazing new episodes and, there's well over 250 podcast episodes for you to listen to in the back catalog.
In the meantime, if you want to keep up with me in the summer, we are still doing shows every Monday for you over on Patreon, Adoptees Off Script. And we have this amazing new thing we're doing once a month called Ask an Adoptee Therapist. And the recordings of these are dropped in podcast format into your podcast app for Patreons.
And I'm going to give you a little clip of the one we just released in June. Ask an adoptee therapist with Marta Isabella Sierra, and you can hear that right here.
(Upbeat music)
Haley Radke: Our last question submitted is from Bruce. Bruce asked Janina Fisher, who wrote Healing the Fractured Selves of Trauma Survivors, describes the conclusion of trauma recovery as being, when the nervous system can finally experience the sensation of it's over and no longer has to defend against a threat that the body experiences a still being active. There have been periods of time in my recovery where I thought I had to reach that point only to discover a few triggers down the road that there is a whole nother floor of the house littered with trap doors to explore. For adoptee trauma, is it realistic to think that there is an end to the healing work or even a stage where we can just sharpen the saw?
Marta Isabella Sierra, LMHC: I loathe this moment to be the bearer of really rough news. I just was talking about this actually in my own supervision today. No. If I'm gonna be as simple and honest, no, there is no end. This is lifelong healing. I don't believe that I. What happened to us is recoverable even in one generation because it wasn't one generation of trauma.
This is generations of trauma in our birth family system and the adoptive family system often as well. And so I don't think it's realistic and I think there's ideally some compassion, some self-compassion that can be had in that. If you know that this is lifelong, that doesn't mean daily suffering.
That's not what I'm saying. I think when we pursue healing, especially when we pursue it with the open heart and really commit to ourselves, that there can be long periods of joy and growth and building things. That's always my wish that adoptees can heal enough to build things in their lives to make being here okay.
Even to make it okay. And to make it feel like you wanna wake up tomorrow. That's the work there. There is joy here. There is love here. And ideally we can stay around long enough to have those experiences. But I, I cannot sit here and lie to you that it's not gonna be forever, because there's just so many layers to this healing.
And the more we heal, the deeper that gets, we get to touch into different places.
Haley Radke: I appreciate your honesty and I mean, we're all living just a human experience as well, so I think there's just always going to be things, and I think our community too, right? If you're here, you're a curious person and you're, interested in self exploration and personal growth and all of those things.
So we're already on the path. So as much as you're like, oh, I don't wanna tell you this, it's but we kind of already knew. We kind of knew. Yeah. Yes.
(Upbeat music.)
Haley Radke: Oh my gosh. I love Marta. She just says it like it is. If you wanna join us for our upcoming ask and adoptee therapists, we've got one scheduled in July and August and September every month. So we would love to have you join us. Again, you can go to adopteeson.com/community or slash book club, whatever details you wanna grab to join us. All the events are up on the website and I'm just really proud of all the work and resources we are making for you and for our community. So again, a huge thank you to Nicole for joining us today.
A huge thank you to every guest who has been generous with their stories and talking through their adoptee experiences all year long. And I'm really yeah, I'm sad about my break. I'm happy it'll be kid time, kid summer for me. I'm still in the middle of mommy time. My boys are nine and just about 11 as I'm recording this and so I just don't wanna miss a moment.
I am so thankful for each one of you. Thank you so much for listening, and we will be back in September with brand new episodes for you. Thank you for listening. I'm sending my big love to you.
