Jen Woodward

It was a really long process. When you grow up in a transracial adoption, only around majority Caucasian people with no diversity, you don’t want to assimilate. But you also have no way to not assimilate. And you have no way to familiarize yourself with your actual culture because there’s no one around you like that. It wasn’t until late in my twenties that I started to work and play in different social circles, where I was given the opportunity to meet people from all over. That’s when I started to open up more about my culture and heritage. Then around 2018, I went back to Korea. And once I did, I fell in love with all aspects of it and was very interested in the food, the culture, K-drama, and learning about things through that.But if you asked me in 1990 if I could be proud of being Asian, I don’t know if there was a lot of pride that was outwardly being shown. We weren’t allowed to celebrate other people’s races. We weren’t able to watch a K-drama. We weren’t able to watch Crazy Rich Asians and see hot Asian men and women that weren’t being objectified. So time has also helped that and where our society is today.

Back then, I thought it was my parents. They were strict. I’m adopted, my sister is adopted, but she looks exactly like my parents. I was the firstborn and I couldn’t do anything right. Everything was a struggle. I also craved empathy. From a young age, I would watch movies and want to be transported into that situation. I wanted to do drugs. I wanted to go to rehab. There were a lot of ups and downs. There were visits to so many psychiatrists and therapists. I was put in programs. I don’t know if the west coast has this, but it was called PINS, People in Need of Supervision.

I was a troublemaker, but always on the surface because I always knew how to pull myself out. Eventually, my parents said, we can’t do this anymore and so I said I don’t want to live with you anymore. I moved out and moved into a friend’s house, which wasn’t easy.

My parents and I had a tumultuous relationship into my mid-twenties. But when I moved across the country to California, we became closer. I saw a change in my parents too. They started to accept me. They don’t understand this life, but they’re very proud and very excited and want me to send pictures of everything that I do. We still fight a lot about certain things like politics and religion, but in the end, it’s come full circle and it’s both of us accepting each other for who we are and saying, well, this is family and we love each other.

In the past, intimacy has been easy for me, but it’s not easy to maintain. Because I was adopted, there was always this issue, especially when I was younger, of abandonment. Is this person going to stick around? Does this person really mean, I love you? There’s always a test. Early on in my relationships, I would push you away immediately. That’s something I’ve grown out of. I still test people, but it’s much less because I have trust in myself and trust that I’m going to pick someone to be in my life, whether it’s a friend or a boyfriend, or a lifelong partner that is going to love me because I love myself.

But I feel like I’m more intimate with friends because it’s less of an obligation. A friend can make you mad and might say that upset me. But if your partner says something that makes you angry, you’re screaming and yelling. There’s such a difference in your reaction. You expect more of your partner, your husband, your wife. But I would say I go through waves of intimacy. Sometimes I’m a very sexual person, sometimes, I’m not. It’s important to talk and communicate that with your partner, so they understand what’s going on too.