- Don't forget to hydrate.

Don't forget to hydrate.

Did you drink enough water today?

You drink?

What does it mean to be a person from a place?

What does it mean to have ancestors that live in a place that might be connected to you, but you don't have any physical representation of that in the world besides your face?

- Okay, here we go!

Oh...reverse!

- When you're out in nature, there's something that comes alive for you.

You're not gonna be judged in nature and you'll always have a refuge there.

- Do you need some?

- Being outdoors has always been such a place of mystery and fun.

Half the fun of hiking and backpacking is just learning how to prepare and how to be okay with yourself.

I grew up in the hill country of south Texas with a bunch of other white people.

Adoption was always something celebrated by my family, but I was not very interested in connecting with my heritage.

In college, I was exposed to more and became more aware of my own Asian identity.

I was actually around a lot of other Koreans for the first time, so I had Korean classmates and for the new year, I was invited to a Korean home.

One of the family members pulled me aside and said, "I know that your birth family.

You would want to know that you're okay and we'll help you find your birth family."

I was both very excited and flabbergasted that someone would offer to help me with this process.

So I called my mom and understandably my mom freaked out a little bit.

- All right, - Come and get it.

Adoption is a lifelong journey and my story at many points felt like a black hole.

It felt like the closer I got to it, the more I'd be sucked into the unknowns and the darkness of it.

Often adoptees experience their adoption as being celebrated, but for the adoptee it also means a loss of family, a loss of country, a loss of a language, a loss of a heritage, of food and traditions.

This is a loss for me and it's a loss that only I can experience.

I work as a crime victim advocate with a law enforcement agency.

So the work that I do is often companioning with folks who have experienced a lot of trauma.

And what we've learned about trauma is that our bodies absorb that experience and our brain absorbs that experience.

But I think when we accept that our bodies hold that memory and then can let our bodies move.

We're able to process things.

So I walk when I feel sad, I walk when I feel angry, I walk when I have confusion or I'm feeling grief.

Moving in nature is so important because it's in nature we find that solace.

When we meet with that old friend, something is solved within us and it's solved by walking.

I became a young working professional in the education field with international students and a significant thing that happened was my advanced conversation class chose adoption as a topic they wanted to discuss.

So as a teacher, I did my best to be neutral, but ended up one day saying more about my experiences as a person who's been adopted and how much that opened up grief inside of me, which kind of prompted me to go to counseling and began a very healing process for me to be able to accept the grief.

And then I was ready to find out more about my birth family.

There I was!

- After her temporary care at a foster home of Wonju branch, The baby was transferred to Seoul on May 23rd, 1983, and placed in a foster home in Seoul on May 24th.

You can almost see the names through the permanent marker 'cause it's aged so much.

I mean, I've had a lot of time to process this, so I don't, I don't have a strong emotional reaction to it today.

Nola does.

But I will say it was quite the surprise when I discovered it the first time.

Right Nolies?

You don't know much about your origin story either.

Mystery.

Mystery.

I went back to reconnecting with my adoption agency And this time, there were enough firm places within me that I could proceed on my own.

Knowing that it could lead me to answers I didn't wanna know.

It could lead me to knowledge of a death.

It could lead me to a person who didn't want to be connected to me.

It could lead to a lot of different things.

Ultimately, what it led to was no answer for my own journey, I think it was helpful to, to have the answer of, we don't know.

I had done what I could and then I could move forward.

And the way that I was able to move forward was to reconnect with my foster family, - Our connection!

Yay!

We're going to Korea.

How long has it been since you've been in Korea?

- 40 years.

It's been 40 years.

So, huzzah!

- Huzzah!

- All right.

-We're in Korea.

Oh my gosh.

- Mindy and I just got off the plane.

It wasn't really real until I saw the land and the little mountains that look a little bit like Tennessee hills.

- Hi, I'm Ms.

Park.

Hello.

Finally we meet.

Yes, nice to meet you.

Why don't you have a seat?

- This is me and my dad.

Yes.

- I don't even know how I had the imagination that I wanted to go to my foster parents' grave.

I even asked my foster sister, is it weird that I asked?

And her response was, what's weird about visiting your parents?

And we're currently on the bus to go to Taebaek.

Very excited.

Taebaek is where I was born, so being in a land in a place was so important.

I don't have the connections with people besides my foster family.

That is such a gift.

Just being there.

I couldn't stop thinking about my ancestors.

I would look at the taxi driver and be like, he could be my relative.

There was a moment on the hike where I stopped on a bridge and I was able to, in not moving, feel my belonging in this place.

I think it's important to, to carry that feeling, but it's not something you can carry by staying.

You have to carry it by leaving, by continuing your journey.