Patricia Maynard
Patricia Maynard: Connecting through adoption
Written by Patricia Maynard
My connection with the Canadian-Korean community is through adoption. We had a two-year old daughter at home but knew that we wanted to have more children. When my husband and I were exploring international adoption, we met a family at the Children’s Aid Society who had recently brought home their four-year old daughter from Korea. With address in hand, we quickly connected with the Social Welfare Society in Seoul and two years later our son arrived and he was followed two years after by a second son. Both boys had been in foster homes in Seoul and our oldest son had developed a very strong attachment to his foster parents, a situation that proved very difficult for him to adjust to once he was in his new home as he missed his foster mother so much. When he was about nine years old, we travelled to Korea as a family and we had the opportunity to meet her. Our son was the first foster child who had ever come back to visit her so this was a very emotional visit for both of them.
Adapting to our new lives was not without some adjustment. Our sons had only ever heard Korean sounds and had never slept in a crib. They were frightened and cried a lot in those early days. We were very lucky to find a local adoption group, and, through word of mouth, families with Korean children as well as children from other countries joined in and slowly we formed a strong support group. Our children made friends with other Korean adoptees and these relationships are still ongoing today. We were also fortunate to connect with the Ottawa Korean-Canadian community and in particular to the Ottawa Korean School. Our children attended the Saturday morning Korean language classes and we became involved in other activities such as the semi-annual picnics and Christmas parties. The Korean families in the school were very supportive and offered us as much help as possible in trying to infuse some Korean culture into our boys (interestingly enough, it was our non-Korean daughter who was most interested in Korean school). Today we still have occasion to meet some of the Korean school colleagues, such as at the celebration in May 2017 hosted by the Senate of Canada to honour Asian Heritage Month.
While I encouraged our young sons to learn more about their heritage, I realized there is a fine line as a parent because our boys just wanted to be like all the other kids in their elementary school. Saturday morning Korean lessons are just not cool when they would rather be out playing with their friends. Adoption leaves so many unanswered questions for the adoptees and there is always the existence of another set of birth parents that they may wish to consider reconnecting with at some point. Our adult children know that we will support them if and when they decide to search for their birth families.
From my point of view, I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have been able to be a mother to these great kids of mine. I think often about their birth parents and the situation they were in at the time that they made an adoption decision for their children. I thank them for entrusting these beautiful children to me in this beautiful country of ours. They would be so very proud of them as successful Canadians and Canadian-Koreans!