Written by: Rachel Forbes
Living With One Foot in Two Worlds
Motherhood and the Longing to Pass Down Ancestral Identity
When my daughter was very young, I would talk to her about “the hard part and the fun part” of things. This was my way of honoring the coexistence of both challenges and gifts in life, in the hopes of her learning that both can be true, and both can be held. These simple words often ring so familiarly true for adoptees in many parts of life.
Living With One Foot in Two Worlds
Adoptees know so well what it’s like to have one foot in one world, while the other is in another: connected to biological family and connected to adoptive family, grieving significant loss and deeply appreciative for opportunities, (for transracial or transcultural adoptees) physically perceived one way in the world but identifying in the culture of another, and so on. There is a close, and sometimes exhaustive, acquaintance with this coexistence, this foot in both worlds.
Especially when I became a mother, I felt spiritually closer to my biological ancestors, and I longed to pass ancestral experience to my children. I longed for connection to Korean culture, hoping to raise my children to feel proud of their Koreanhood, as opposed to the confusion I felt growing up as an adoptee. For an adoptee, with little to no exposure to Korean community growing up, attempting to pass Korean culture onto my children felt like a foreigner scanning every page in the translator’s dictionary to form a simple sentence, hoping someone might take pity on her foreignness. I often felt like an imposter.
I felt so disconnected, yet so desperate to connect.
This particular coexistence felt profound and important in motherhood.
And therein lived the “hard part and the fun part” of re-connecting to my culture of origin.
The Grief of Cultural Severance
The hard part includes heavy, heavy grief: grieving the loss of the life I could have had, one in which the traditions, the practices, the nuances, the turns of phrases, my ancestors’ stories, the history, were all naturally ingrained in my day-to-day being. There is grief for loss of connection, that felt severance, with no simple or clear roadmap for return. I’ve felt as if I was flailing around, sometimes so aimlessly, guided by pure faith that my hands would land somewhere tangible and vaguely recognizable.
And the lack of a roadmap is also the fun part.
Without a clear, steady, or certain guide, I can explore so freely, so curiously, leading with my heart’s desires, and trusting the intuition from my longing. Inside the longing lives a tear-welling treasuring, an ancestral appreciation, another breadcrumb leading back home. The way I cherish holding a spoon to scoop my rice, to then dip into my kimchi stew, eaten as a full bite, is likely comparatively so standard to a non-adoptee. That simple act feels like another tiny step to embodying my Koreanness, and I feel proud. It has left me wondering: what if there is a gift in this? A gift in wholeheartedly appreciating “the little things,” in a way that perhaps other people are uninspired to access? I have come to consider that this may be “the fun part”: reaching excitedly, with full childlike wonder, for anything and all things connected to my culture of origin.
CULTIVATING CURIOSITY: What are the “hard parts and fun parts” for me about longing for my culture of origin as a transracial or transcultural adoptee? How can I hold both of those parts simultaneously without judgment?
Reconnection Resources:
ASIA Families' Korea tours for adoptees:
https://www.asiafamilies.org/adult-adoptees-from-korea
UNESCO World Heritage sites:
AdopteeBridge:
https://www.adopteebridge.org/bridge-to-korea-why-choose-us
Terms Defined
Transracial Adoption
Transracial adoption refers to the adoption of a child by parents of a different race. In the context of this article, it describes not only a family structure but a lived psychological and cultural experience. For Korean transracial adoptees raised outside of Korean community, this often means growing up racially perceived one way while being culturally socialized another. The tension of “one foot in two worlds” is not metaphorical, it is developmental, relational, and ongoing.
Cultural Severance
Cultural severance is the disruption or interruption of direct transmission of language, traditions, ancestral stories, and collective memory. For adoptees separated from their birth culture, severance may occur before conscious memory forms. In adulthood, it can manifest as longing, grief, imposter feelings, or a sense of searching without a clear roadmap. Cultural severance is not simply lack of exposure; it is the embodied absence of inherited belonging.
Cultural Grief
Cultural grief is the mourning of belonging that might have been absorbed naturally. It is grief for recipes never learned at a grandmother’s elbow, for idioms never spoken fluently, for lineage that feels conceptually known but not physically lived. In transracial adoptee adulthood, especially during identity-shaping milestones like parenthood, cultural grief can surface as both heaviness and urgency. It is not pathology. It is attachment reaching toward continuity.
Ancestral Identity
Ancestral identity refers to the sense of self shaped by lineage: genetic, cultural, historical, and spiritual inheritance. In this article, ancestral identity becomes especially vivid in motherhood, when questions of inheritance, resemblance, and continuity feel cellular rather than abstract. For adoptees, ancestral identity may feel partially obscured or fragmented, yet deeply alive in longing. Reconnection efforts often represent attempts to integrate this identity into present-day embodiment.
Nervous System Imprint
A nervous system imprint describes the physiological patterns shaped by early relational experiences, particularly separation and attachment disruption. Adoption begins with rupture, even when it later brings safety and love. The body can carry implicit memory, such as patterns of vigilance, over-adaptation, hyper-independence, or sensitivity to abandonment, long before conscious narrative forms. In the context of cultural reconnection, embodied experiences (language, food, land, community) can gently reshape these imprints, allowing the nervous system to register moments of belonging.
