You get the Mu Ji Gae Camp.
My children are there right now and, while I miss them like the dickens, I know inside that this 5 day period each summer is one of the absolute highlights of their year.
The camp as seen here with more infoan amazing place. There are links here to the Family Day that just happened two days ago.
It’s interesting. Anyone who is a student of statistics knows that in a group of say, 300 you will have a certain percentage of people with H.I.V., people with diabetes, people who are cancer survivors…and people who are infertile. It’s been my personal
experience that even if someone finds out that I am infertile, it is a struggle for them to ask me anything about it. It’s so intensely intimate and personal. ( Not to say the other physical elements just mentioned are not.)
Until this year, the Wifestrocity and I have stayed through the Family Day with our kids, and then left them after that. Last year, they both fled to be with their pals, thus losing some of the allure to “Family Day”. This year we got wise, and let them go off with their buddies with no muss or fuss. However, every hear previous to this one, I’ve walked around during that day, surrounded by a few hundred people. Almost all are strangers but when you see them interacting with their kids, there is this immensely powerful unspoken bond that I feel. I know what they’ve lived, I realize what the road is they’ve travelled and the awful emotional and physical battles are that they fought and lost- almost to the last. ( There are some adoptive families with a Biological Child in there here and there, but not many.)
When the kids were babies, infertility was quite the topic of discussion at our local adopted Korean family group get-togethers. However those days are gone by virtue of lack of need and time… but the connection exists yet. It always will. I find myself surrounded by families that needed to BE families. These parents all made the serious conscious choice to go and make their family work in a non-traditional way.
The kids are now early teens. It’s fascinating. A boy who flew over with my son ( whose folder was just in there with my son’s placement folder and could have EASILY been my son… ) refuses to attend camp now. For whatever reasons he now has some more issues with his Koreanness and doesn’t wish to be there. A few Bio Siblings attend and enjoy it ( one is rooming with my son for the 2nd year in a row, god they’re as thick as thieves those two ). A few Bio Sibs have zero interest in being immersed in what is in practicality one big Role Reversal. For 5 days it’s a sea of Korean faces with a tiny smattering of white kids in there. The exact opposite of the dynamic normally lived by all of the kids attending.
I find it very, very lovely to see and feel. I thought I would share the place and feeling here. 