BRAND X

glitterlion:

If you’re a person of color, especially if you’re Black,

and you’re hanging out with your white friend(s),

and they start talking shit about cops while the cops are in hearing distance,

you turn around and you walk as fast as you can without bringing attention to yourself in the opposite direction and you never talk to that friend or those friends ever again,

because they do not have your safety in mind.

If you can’t just throw away a friendship away like this and you try to explain to them why their actions are not okay and they don’t get it, then at least never go out in public with them. Take care of yourself, because they won’t.

I love how Tumblr can teach me more about how to survive and navigate this world in a single post than the adoptive parents who “rescued” me could in 18 years.

Imagine Homeland Security telling you that you’re an “Illegal Alien” after being adopted as a child orphaned by war into an American family, graduating high school, college, AND serving in the U.S. military.

It happens more than you know.

(Source: brandx)

hyunsooklee:

Having a really bad week.

I really want to start/restart my Korean family search, but I don’t know if I have the emotional fortitude to do it effectively. Last time, I ultimately let it fall by the wayside because I was so discouraged by all the dead ends. I can’t imagine it gets easier.

My husband’s grandma died last week, and I think the idea of death and our finite time on this earth, the whole idea of losing a mother, is hitting me harder than I thought, and I think that’s what has brought this family search back to the forefront of my priorities. Because what if she dies and I never get the chance to meet her? I’m not sure I’d be able to live with myself if I knew I could’ve searched harder, longer, more persistently and didn’t…and then she died.

I just honestly don’t know where to go from here. My life is such that I cannot pick up and move to Korea for any length of time to do in-depth investigations. I’ve already gone through the traditional avenues (Holt and KAS) and was met with road blocks and zero information at both places. Just the realization that I don’t know what the next step is or how to pick back up or who to talk to is enough to make me burst into tears. I feel so helpless and lost and that’s the worst feeling. What if there’s a family in Korea that I have no way of accessing?

Sometimes I honestly feel like giving up on life, because this—the one thing I want more than anything—is so impossible that nothing else in the world seems worthwhile anymore.

What is Attachment Therapy?

Attachment Therapy (AT) is a growing, underground movement for the “treatment” of children who pose disciplinary problems to their parents or caregivers. AT practitioners allege that the root cause of the children’s misbehavior is a failure to “attach” to their caregivers. The purported correction by AT is — literally — to force the children into loving (attaching to) their parents.

The methods employed in AT are among the most disrespectful, degrading, insensitive, and harsh (i.e., brutal) imaginable. They are intended to overcome the resistance of a child to total obedience to the mother. They are employed until the child’s will is completely broken. If a child is stubbornly resistant to the treatment or the desired outcome — as understandably he or she often is — the brutality of the treatments escalates. This can go on, around the clock, for months or years.

Most often the children targeted for AT are those who have been adopted or are in foster care; a disproportionate number are of minority race or ethnicity, are autistic, or have physical disabilities.

AT has two major components to it. First, there is a hands-on treatment involving physical restraint and discomfort, termed psychotherapy by the professional or paraprofessional “therapists” who carry it out. This is usually accompanied by the second component, a phalanx of parenting techniques which brings AT brutality into the home, on a 24/7 basis. Both components are without basis in psychological theory or research evidence.

- ACT (Advocates for Children in Therapy)

To hell with anyone who propagates this racist, ableist child torture, wittingly or otherwise.