楮平花

Title: Counting By 7s Author: Holly Goldberg Sloan Ranking: ★☆☆☆☆ Plot Summary: The description of the book on the author’s website reads, “Counting By 7s is the story of Willow Chance, a twelve-year-old girl who has been identified at an early age as ‘gifted’. Willow lives in Bakersfield, California and comes home from school one day to the news that her parents have been killed in a traffic…

Last weekend, I had the immense honor of being the keynote speaker at the very first national Chinese adoptee conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (plus two Canadian Chinese adoptees). In total, there were nearly 200 of us in attendance. To have a gathering like this, a space for only Chinese adoptees, has been a dream of mine ever since I became involved in Korean adoptee conference spaces.…

To my Chinese adoptee friends and kin who became United States citizens under the Child Citizenship Act of 2000 and have not traveled outside of the U.S. with a passport after your adoption, now is the time to check and make sure that you have a Certificate of Citizenship. The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 essentially combined the processes of international adoption and citizenship, so adoptees…

I was adopted from Nanjing, Jiangsu province, China on June 17, 1997. I was three years old at the time and unable to anticipate what dramatic life changes were in store for me. For the last 27 years, adoption has impacted so many facets of my life – many of them out of my control, and some of them within. Through what I chose to study in college, who I sought out for friendship, what I choose to…

At the end of June, I was extremely honored to be invited to speak at a dinner meeting with the White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (WHIAANHPI). This listening session was held in Minnetonka, Minnesota while members of the White House Initiative were traveling through the state to meet with other AANHPI communities in Minnesota. The meeting began by…

Earlier this summer, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by my longtime friend, Lillian Hexter, for the series Adoptees in 3: Connecting Mind, Heart, and Action. This interview was particularly meaningful for me because Lillian and I were in the same transformative class in college that catalyzed our adoption consciousness and prompted us both to become involved in the adoptee community. More…

I’m happy to share with you all that JaeRan Kim and I were recently interviewed for a new episode of the Adapted podcast by Kaomi Lee. We discuss our entry into writing about adoption through our personal blogs as well as our recent collaboration on the Adoptee Consciousness Model. It has been so meaningful to hear from so many of you that this model we have created resonates deeply and has been…

This past Tuesday, I received a phone call that I could have never expected. “Hi Grace, we have some really hard news to share,” my friend’s mother said, “Helen died.” In the last few days, I’ve replayed this conversation in my head over and over, trying to make sense of how my beautiful 27-year-old friend could be gone. It still doesn’t feel real to me, and as I type this and re-read this, I am…

I’m writing this post in the upstairs office of my new house the weekend before my first set of PhD classes begin. With the deadlines of home-buying paperwork, a cross-state move, and early stages of wedding planning, a significant milestone passed without acknowledgement. Though I’m a couple of months late, I think that a full decade of writing this blog deserves celebration. I started Red…

He took my hand and led me through a small wooded area that opened up to a beautiful beach. To the left, lush green flora climbed up the sides of volcanoes in the distance. And to the right, rugged lava rocks intermixed with yellow sand and gentle waves, as they rhythmically came to shore. In what seemed like a scene from a romance novel, he knelt on one knee and asked me to marry him while the…

Reclaiming November as National Adoptee Awareness Month

Cozy sweaters, warm drinks, long walks to look at the colorful leaves, and anticipation for a season full of festive holidays – these are all things that I look forward to as summer days become shorter and usher in the brisk, autumn air. Of all the fall/winter holidays that make this season so special, Thanksgiving has always been my favorite because I am able to gather with family, eat delicious…

Adoptee Literary & Art Archive – Call for Submissions

I received an email from Chinese adoptee Hannah Gershone about her project that is looking at the intersection between adoption and environmental justice. I am happy to share her project with my readers. There is about one week left before the submission deadline. Adoptee Literary and Art Archive: Call for SubmissionsDeadline: November 1, 2022Contact: Hannah GershoneEmail:…

Read My First Journal Article!

Hello everyone, I am so excited to share that my first peer-reviewed journal article is published in a special issue of Child Abuse and Neglect on the topic of adoption and trauma. I was initially made aware of the call for papers in the spring of 2020 and have been working with a special professor at the Brown School at Washington University in Saint Louis for over a year on the writing and…

The Box of Lost Things

Last year, I took a class on social work practice with children and families. One of the final assignments during the semester was to create a presentation of either a skillshare or a toolbox that social workers could use for working with certain populations. I presented on working with adoptees in middle childhood and their adoptive families and highlighted three interventions in my toolbox, two…

Hello all, Happy end of 2021! I hope you’ve stayed safe and healthy and Covid-free this year. It’s been a long time since I’ve written regularly on this blog, and I suppose I owe you some life updates that will explain my relative silence. This post is a short recap on what this past year has entailed. January – May: I completed my second semester of practicum at a child grief center, working…

Culture Keeping on the Christmas Tree

With Christmas just two weeks away, I’ve seen several adoptive parents asking where to find Chinese or culturally themed ornaments for stocking stuffers and small Christmas presents for their children. Here is a light post, showcasing some of my Chinese themed ornaments I hung on my Christmas tree this weekend. Most of these were gifted to me by my mother over the years or purchased in China.…