Glimmers of Hope

Toward the Healing of Painful Life Experiences through Narrative Counseling

Mucherera

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781621895152
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Every individual has a story--painful or happy--and the story will only be complete and meaningful when shared with others willing to listen to it. These are the stories of several people who embarked on a journey toward healing from abortion, adoption, abuse (sexual and spousal), anger, bullying, cutting, infertility, divorce, grief, people pleasing, and fear, as well as people struggling to break the chains of psychological colonialism/neocolonialism and to survive as orphans. This book contains a wealth of knowledge on how transformation of life can take place using Narrative Counseling. Most of the stories shared in this book are personal to many of the authors. Some share their journey of struggling with hopeless situations to where they regained hope through counseling using the Narrative approach. Others, such as the orphaned children, found relief in just having someone sit with them to listen to their daily struggles of living an orphaned life. In this book you will find a place where these stories will somehow intersect with your own story. Take a chance, read, and you will find a glimmer of hope in these stories.

1: Identity is in One’s Story

Healing Identity Wounds of Adoption

through Narrative Therapy

Trisha L. Kraal

I was born in South Korea and adopted at the age of five months by a family in the United States. My new family was of Dutch heritage and lived in west Michigan. The town was not especially diverse, so it was no small thing for my parents to adopt internationally and bring an Asian child into the all-white, Dutch community in which we lived.

I was adopted into a family of three older boys, all biological children of my adoptive parents. I was raised always knowing that I was Korean and that I was adopted. When I was a child, my mother continuously spoke to me about how special I was because I was adopted. I accepted this at a very young age, but such conversations between my parents and me ceased, as I grew older. I then began to experience a strange, internal dissonance that was, at times, unnerving.

My family seldom spoke of my Korean ethnicity or about Korean culture, traditions, or customs. In my community were a few children who were adopted also from Korea, but our ethnicity was never used as a point of connection. I spoke, acted, and dressed as a white, Dutch girl. My mother curled and permed my hair; she dressed me in traditional, Dutch costumes for annual festivals; and both my grandfathers taught me Dutch vocabulary. My Korean heritage was acknowledged only to the extent that it was necessary for medical forms—the manila envelope and small box in which my mother had placed a few items from my arrival in the U.S. (my adoption papers, the yellow outfit I wore, and my booties). Growing up, I consciously marked that I was ‘Asian’ on medical forms, school documents, and later on college applications, but whenever I looked into the mirror I saw a white person staring back at me. When I looked at family photos, I did not discern my Asian features as being different from my blonde-haired, blue-eyed parents and brothers. When I was younger, I interpreted this lack of concern for, or consideration of, differences to mean that I had been successfully integrated into an all-white family. Today, I strongly beg to differ.

I now interpret my experience as an adopted child as one that is quite sad, because my Korean heritage was uncelebrated. My family unintentionally ignored the reality that I was different—but I am different. I am Asian; I am Korean. Yet, I was raised as a white person. Only my physical features were acknowledged as a point of difference between my family and me. Although my mother enjoyed my Asian features that made me a “cute” child, and she told me that being adopted made me “special,” I knew that I was expected to be Dutch in every other way. I did not consciously analyze and interpret these experiences when I was young, but I now understand that the message I received while growing up was that I was not supposed to be Korean; I was supposed to be white. The message resulted in an internal dissonance that came from knowing that I was not completely white, but also not knowing what it meant to be Korean. It was a tremendously frightening and almost out-of-body-like experience to look into the mirror and know that I was not white, but I also did not see Asian. Those experiences left me feeling strangely lost and scared. My coping mechanism was to believe that if I worked hard enough it would be possible for me to be like “everyone else.”

My experience is perhaps not unlike that of other adoptees, specifically those who have been adopted internationally. According to Lee and Quintana18, children who are adopted into families that are ethnically different from the adoptee will find the process of identity formation to be more challenging. Let us further consider this issue of ethnic identity and how such a challenge might be addressed using a specific psychotherapeutic approach called Narrative Therapy. I will also examine more closely the theory and techniques of Narrative Therapy and consider the ways in which this particular form of counseling can be used to address issues concerning one’s ethnic identity.

Ethnic Identity

I am certainly not alone in my struggle to achieve an ethnic identity. In 2006, 20,670 international adoptions took place in the United States.19 Children are adopted internationally from over 100 countries.20 Nearly 60 percent of these children come from Asia21 and nearly 90 percent come from twenty countries, mainly China, Russia, South Korea, and Guatemala.22 Each of these adopted children will need to decide for themselves if and how they will claim their ethnic identity. Several professional counselors and therapists who have worked with international adoptees have observed that developing a solid ethnic identity can be an especially difficult task for these persons due to “their membership in bi-ethnic families.”23

Tajfel’s (1981) Social Identity Theory proposes that a person’s positive social identity contributes to them having a strong concept of self. Bhugra24 states that if one discerns that his or her ethnicity is negatively perceived or received by others, feelings of shame can become a part of that person’s identity. Considering the diversity found among the U.S. population today resulting from international adoptions, interracial marriages and relationships, and immigration, many people seek to find their place in this country, in this world, and in this life.

Narrative Therapy and Ethnic Identity

There are several ways in which a counselor can approach issues such as identity and cultural identification. Narrative Therapy has been acknowledged as a preferable form of therapy for issues related to ethnic identity based upon the assertion that identity is found in each person’s life story.25 Our identity is comprised of the various components of our story. Ethnic identity has been defined as “the degree to which individuals identify as members of an ethnic group.”26 Phinney27 also defined ethnic identity as a person’s relationship to his or her own group and the attitude toward that group.

In a study conducted by Syed & Azmitia,28 a Narrative approach was used in an attempt to capture a better understanding of the link between the process of ethnic identity formation and the content of ethnic identity. According to Syed & Azmitia,29 attention has been given to the process of forming an ethnic identity, but a closer observation of the content of that identity has been neglected. In other words, what is it that makes a person’s ethnic identity their ethnic identity? What is one’s ethnic identity comprised of? Syed and Azmitia30 were especially interested in exploring the information about “the experiences that prompt adolescents and emerging adults to explore and construct, revisit, or potentially change their ethnic identities.”

James Marcia31 expounded upon the work of Erik Erikson and developed an ethnic identity status model in an effort to better understand the process of identity formation.32 Marcia33 identified four phases of identity crisis that one experiences later in adolescence: achieved, moratorium, foreclosed, and diffused.34 However, this particular model was applicable to individuals in late adolescence, perhaps ages fourteen to eighteen years. A new phase of human development has now been identified, known as “emerging adulthood.”35 This period refers to the space between late teens and young adulthood—about eighteen to twenty-five years, often the college years, and is an appropriate phase during which to begin searching for id...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Contributors
• Introduction: Bringing Bleak Stories to Life through Narrative Counseling
• Chapter 1: Identity is in One’s Story
• Chapter 2: Recovering One’s Self-Image from Years of Bullying
• Chapter 3: A New Life Story after Death to “People Pleasing”
• Chapter 4: An Adult Survivor of Childhood Abuse
• Chapter 5: Healing through Cutting the “Cutting”
• Chapter 6: Fear of Sleeping Alone
• Chapter 7: A Personal Journey through Complicated Grief
• Chapter 8: The Promise was a Marriage Full of Life, But Ours Died at His Hands
• Chapter 9: I Was Told I Would Be Okay
• Chapter 10: Narrative Healing with Scripture through the Agony of Postcolonialism
• Chapter 11: A Child’s Healing Journey Battling Anger
• Chapter 12: I Am Only 12 and Have to Parent
• Chapter 13: The Tragedy of Divorce and the Hope Found through Narrative
• Chapter 14: Just One to Hold
• Bibliography