and welcome to the show my name is now you sheree and today we have two special guests we have the dynamic twins we have to my right we have janine bands and to my far right we have jeanette  korean born twins were sent to an american couple living in the suburbs of seattle washington the twins were told that they had to beef they had been found in a box on the streets of seoul south korea and they believe this about question for three decades the twins assume of model role of typical asian americans as minorities lucky lucky to be living in the great united states we always believed we didn't question at all that we were actually found in a box in seoul south korea and so you know we got used to the idea and never questioned it and so my book really talks about my life with my adoptive family as my real family or as our real family and we were adopted in one thousand nine hundred two grew up here in the suburbs of seattle and we grew up like typical minorities our parents were very religious and so we grew up in the church mostly because they kind of call our recall or so i was recovering christians so i mean you know of course there's good points with religion right you know and but there's also some drawbacks to because we were taught that there was only one way to god and so when we encountered other people you know we always had this perception that other people weren't as a moral you know our family and so we grew up in the south seattle area and the book is about of relationship with her mother which was triggered when we were twelve years old and our dad sustained a head injury and that happened in one thousand nine hundred four and since then he became physically disabled we needed to help him with physical therapy occupational there he ended up well i think too with the first book the reason why she wrote the book was to really get over the pain because our mom passed away from cancer and so she started writing as journaling and just getting that pain now and after and then she gave the book to a friend it wasn't even a book it was more of a journal she gave up journal to her friend and she said wow this book is amazing but you just have to take out that anger and so  went back and she took out the anger and she didn't have any book laughs oh gosh i have to write again and i was a writer so she started over but this time with more of like a higher perspective of looking down at these people and so it's really our dad with his physical disability and our mom with her mental issues and growing up at the age of twelve it starts out and then and until about twenty four when he actually passed away and she felt safe with writing this book because she passed away so that's the first book and then the second book is the search for mother missing and that's going back to korea to look for birth mother so then so what happened was when i gave a reading to a group of adoptees they had told us about a trip to adoption and that was the first time i ever even knew that there were other adoptees out there you know all this time with we knew like maybe two adoptees but we never ever talked about our adoption you know we just thought our lives were normal you know everybody's got parents and we never ever questioned did the lack of bond is that normal maybe the racism is that you know how do you do their experience their experiences and so this would be an opportunity for us to kind of socialize and network with other adoptees but i knew in my mind that a book would probably evolve from it and because i had kind of developed well i had time to write and then  i learned how to write as i was writing my first one so i thought that it would be an interesting topic just for myself and then to give down to my children grandchildren and whatnot  at least one part of the book they could identify with just so many different aspects about it and experiences that it was amazing with how many people would come up to me and say wow i could that adoption agencies market and promote that there's the underside of the pancake that nobody knows about and we didn't even know that there was that  that we own we knew that we should appreciate our lives you know question anything and we have a saying yeah be grateful i mean i remember being should be thankful not realizing that there's other people involved yeah and that our birth parents their violate their rights to have been violated by the adoption agency the adoption agency you know claim that they're creating families that they're putting families together but they're also separating families but you don't hear about the are they have a child that passed away a baby girl and they already had two sons and so they were thinking of adopting a baby nd our parents decided to adopt from agency and then because they were from oregon also the couple that started adoption they are originally from oregon and our parents were from but it also became pretty much worldwide or and also well at least it got marketed in oregon state and then expanded to other states and now then it grew into turkey and for korean children because they had so many requests from americans wanting to adopt that then they had to start  and we were always closer with our dad than our mom our mom i heard at the very beginning just totally doted over and really loved but then i think she grew tired was just really tired and maybe after the first ten years twelve years it just kind of very you know she just got more tired and more tired and more tired where and so i didn't really feel like i bonded with her i think there was a disconnect i mean i was trying to remember like the feeling of love when you give a child love and and so i was trying to remember a time that my mom actually gave me that loving nurturing that typical mothers would do and i could only remember one time and that was the time where i was in the car and my dad accidently rolled up the when i remember when my mom adoptees who were the only child and they were led very isolated and kind of lonely childhoods and so i always felt very lucky to have it yeah like if it wasn't for my well i think but i think we internalize so many things but i think i'm getting used to it and his disability because he was you know he was like the rock before well bathroom brush his teeth you know do all of the basic things and then when we get home from school it was exercising with feeding him his dinner and during our own homework and so that was like the typical day and then we were i mean we were worried about him you know when we were home and we'd feel guilty every time we would you know want to go out and maybe do something with their friends and feel guilty for leaving dad there and we felt like he was just suffering in silence is really difficult and we had we did the show several years ago and he list was racism or prejudice what types of things that you experienced when we were growing up well it's more subtle it wasn't blatant racism it's more the general came from so i was just like you could tell they hate it here just because you just like you're not supposed to be here you know and i think we fell on the other side a distance from the real koreans a because we could not speak the language so it was really difficult and they just knew that i don't know they just knew so they would like try and come up and be friend the silent invisible side to where the korean parents either feel ashamed and believe that they don't have any rights to their kids and probably have given up all rights or all hope to ever meet a stick and from the stories that i've heard a lot of them have been deceived out of their children  see the adoption agencies actually make money off of parents who don't have the soft confidence and themselves to believe in themselves to keep their children and so they will give the mother counseling and then out of that counseling very few will decide to keep their children i think there's the sticks and i have to put it up on  money in fact the holts annual report for two thousand and eight they made for two thousand and eight about ten million five hundred thousand no more than that  adoption services and then they get like donations about you know ten it was like at least almost two million in donations but i know they get a lot more too of course they have a huge amount of expenses as well but nobody really scrutinizes these adoption agencies when it comes to adoption instead they is help give resources to the family to help get them out of whatever situation they're in instead ever moving the children because the children are the family's future oh yes that's hard to say but we stayed at the sofitel hotel and seoul south korea and this is the banquet room where we were first welcomed in there's a sign there that and so we got a tour of the premises here and this is one of the i don't know if you call it a temple but it's like  are supposedly from after some research but we can talk about well they they think that we could be from there is just some  the search for a missing mother a peek inside an international adoption and we're going to put your website i think we should go to the web site and they can get a lot of information about the book and about international adoption and