Hello 2022

I want to start off by saying thank you for joining me in yet another year. I want to apologize for my lack of writing as of late. I’ve had some personal things come up this past year that I am going to share with you now. If you’re just here for the travel, you won’t be getting it in this post, but if you’re looking to get to know me a little bit better read on.

It’s January 1, 2022 5:07 pm est. We are technically entering into the 3rd January of this pandemic. I thought I had been holding it together pretty well, but slowly but surely the cracks have begun to form and have widened. For me to feel alive, for me to feel like I’m not a slave to work and to my life I have to go somewhere every 3 months. I’ve realized this years ago and I’ve tried to keep it in practice to keep myself sane. My mental health is something I have struggled with much of my life. The pandemic has not made it any easier. Not just due to the lack of travel but also due to my face.

I’m a transnational transracial adoptee and until January of 2021 I considered myself “other” on forms and thought of myself as Italian-American. I was raised in the northeast and my adoptive father is second generation Italian with all four of his grandparents coming from the Napoli area. My adoptive mother was also second generation European with her heritage being from Hungry, and the UK. (British and Irish or Scottish I’m not sure which to be honest.)

As a transracial transnational adoptee even though I always tried so hard to be white and thought of myself as white and only saw white when I looked in the mirror the racism I faced told me otherwise. I however knew nothing of the country that sent me away. I didn’t want the same for my son so I started him in Korean school. when he began I let them know I was an adoptee. The principal of the school let me know there were other adoptees like myself at the school that were either students themselves or the parent of a student and she wanted to have a Zoom call with us on it. On the call I met a handful of other Korean adoptees, all women, all living in the same state as me. I broke down in tears on the call.

One woman in particular as I get closer than I did with the rest and she let me know about the adoption community on Instagram. I really only used Instagram for getting FOMO. But this opened my eyes to a whole new world. Within months I considered myself Korean-American and was proud of it. The came March.

March 2021 brought the shooting in Atlanta that killed 8 people, 6 of them being Asian women. The rise of the Asian Hate that began in 2020 with the pandemic was getting to a fever pitch. I know racism had never gone away, I dealt with it every day, the microaggressions, to the ignorance, and the flat out racism. But now I was getting scared to even leave my house. As if being unable to travel wasn’t difficult enough, now I worried about even going out in public in my own town.

The vaccines came for the general public in America about a month later and I got my first dose the day it was available and my 2nd dose exactly 3 weeks later. (I got boosted 6 months and a few days later as well!) But very quickly after the vaccines came, the mask mandates were dropped, and this was right in time for Memorial Day Weekend in the states. The “kickoff to summer”. But here I am the single mother of a child who is not old enough to be vaccinated. Even now he’s still not old enough as he is in that youngest group. I have been living in survival mode for years now. I keep starting to break down the walls that are built up during survival mode to try to get back to living, but then things like a worldwide pandemic and an explosion of hate against my people come at the same time to put me squarely back into survival mode.

Where does it end? Where does what end? Survival mode? The pandemic? I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to any of it. It’s not to say I haven’t stayed overnight at some place other than my house at all in 2021, as you know from my Kimpton blog I certainly have. However, being a single mom, trusting a cleaning staff to clean, and just traveling with a tiny human alone, it’s all very exhausting. But I write this from my hideaway in the Berkshires where I am for the weekend. I hope to get some word done (like this blog post!) and take some time to try to relax. I’ll be honest the relaxing hasn’t happened yet as I’ve been catching up on a lot of personal “work” projects but I may try to get away again in 2 weeks for my birthday weekend so maybe I’ll just relax then…..