No 26 — Megan V.

Our Selves, As Humans

Read time: 12 minutes.
Interviewed November 24, 2020. Published March 9, 2021

My name is Megan V. I'm adopted from South Korea with my triplet sisters. I grew up in New Jersey, lived in New York for about eight years in the advertising and technology world, and then moved to California about three or four years ago—sometimes it feels like this year doesn't count. Now I'm actually working in the social impact space doing campaigns for documentaries and films.

What does home mean to you?

Good question. Part one of that is, when we were adopted, my parents always made a point every single year to celebrate our homecoming day. That's been a really interesting way to think about home—the beginning of our adoption and celebrating us coming into this amazing family. Aside from that, I would say home is being around the people that you love.

What does community mean to you?

It's interesting because I feel like home and community can sometimes be a little synonymous, but a really specific thing for me is that everybody in a community has some sense of purpose. Generally speaking I've noticed, especially with my non-immediate family members in any community—whether it's work, friends, or interests—they're present and playing some sort of role. They have a sense of purpose being there. I think that's what makes community really meaningful.

What are you most afraid of right now?

At the moment, I'm really afraid of the pandemic—especially with how divisive our country is, I feel like the pandemic has exacerbated that divide even further. It's going to be a really long road ahead before we can have people from really different opinions actually take the time to sit down and find common ground. I really hope that we can get to that place at some point.

To me, that's what I'm most afraid of: the worry that I can't sit down with somebody that I don't agree with and have a civil conversation.

What's the happiest moment of your life?

It's hard to pick the happiest! I'm trying to think of different periods of my life where I had meaningful moments. I would say one of them was when I composed a piece for a string quartet, which was a huge feat for me. I wasn't originally trying to be a composer—it was just an extracurricular class that I took in high school. I played the viola and violin, and had an amazing composition instructor at the time. I had written this piece, we played it, and—this was a really big deal because he didn't say this to just anybody—the next day, my instructor told me, "I went home and your melody was stuck in my head!" That's always stuck with me as a really happy moment in my life. It's almost a two in one. I love that I made someone else feel really proud.

Another really happy moment is more of a silly one. My sisters and I, as we've gotten older and become adults, we've all moved away to different parts of the world. One time, I facilitated one of my sisters coming back. We completely hid it from my mom—she's always very homesick for all of us—and we surprised her. We just showed up at her door, I think we got it on video. She was just so floored, and I just loved watching her being so happy. That was a really great moment.

What’s the saddest moment of your life?

I have to say it's probably been recently. My uncle just passed away, he had brain cancer and it happened suddenly, and I think what's made me really, really sad about that in particular is the added factor of the pandemic. Normally, I would just hop on a plane and fly out there, but now I can't, and that was really difficult. I'm on the phone with my mom pretty frequently, and I'm hearing her play by play on how the family's doing. He was her sister's husband, and we'd all been one large family unit growing up, always taking vacations together and seeing each other almost every week, so it almost felt like losing a father in some ways. To be so far away from that was really, really tough.

Who's the most influential person in your life?

Can I say multiple people? My mother has been the biggest example of a compassionate and empathetic person, and I find that very influential in my life and how I strive to be. My father is literally the calmest and most pragmatic person I've ever met in my entire life. I grew up with my two sisters, my mom and my dad. He was the only male in our household. He had to deal with us, and I don't ever remember hearing him raise his voice or yell at us, not once in my entire life. I remember talking to some friends about this one day, and they were all in agreement that was pretty rare. He's extremely influential to me, especially as I have times of not being the most logical. I look to my dad for a lot of that. He helps ground me.

Who else? My sisters are very influential to me.

Some days I feel like we're all the same person, but we've just expressed parts of our personality in three different ways.

It's both fun for me to watch and also sometimes incredibly frustrating. I'll see one of my sisters behave a certain way and think, "Oh, I know this is a part of my personality that I don't like, and I know she can fix this because I fixed this." On the opposite end, there have also been some amazing things, especially when I see one of them do something incredible and realize, "How amazing! I can do this too!" The three of us have an interesting, constant gut check with each other, not a comparison but more of an understanding of, "Hey, this is what we're all capable of." We all did a 23andme test to see if we were actually all identical, and we are! It's interesting how all those genetic expressions have blossomed three different ways.

Lastly, my orchestra teacher that I mentioned in high school was really influential for me. He said something one day that stuck with me for a really long time. The conversation had been in a lesson on how to compose our pieces, but it definitely translates to other areas of life:

"Keep things simple, but not simple minded."

It's a very simple phrase in and of itself, but I liked that.

[What instruments do you play?].

It started off with the piano for three years, and then I learned violin. After that, I wanted to not play the same thing as my sisters, so I decided to play viola.

Have you ever experienced prejudice? And if you have, how so?

I've actually thought about this relatively recently. I was with a friend, she's also Asian, and we were talking about some of our experiences. And I told her, "You know, I don't think I've really experienced true prejudice, funny enough." But then I thought about it a little bit later and something did come to mind from when I was in college. It was my first and only experience with social media bullying, and I had completely put it out of my brain, but this girl had started name calling me, saying things like, "MV's a gook," stuff like that. It was intentional, mean and meant to hurt me because she didn’t like me. 

I’ve also had a few girls tell me, completely separately, that they didn’t like me at first because their current boyfriend used to date an Asian girl. It makes me sad that my race sparked those feelings.

Have you ever thought about privilege? How?

The first time I thought about privilege at all was actually in high school. This goes back to my mom, and I'm not really religious anymore, but my mom had us do a bunch of volunteer work on behalf of a church. I would volunteer at the soup kitchen, and I really liked it. The place I volunteered at, they had us act as waiters. We treated everyone who came in as real humans. It was really special. And as you're serving people from this homeless shelter, you're getting to know these people on this one-on-one level and learn personal stories that completely shatter any sort of pre-existing notion of who they are. 

Talking to them, getting to know them, you'd start to push aside your own biases and realize, this is not the face of a homeless person.

That was really, really profound to me. In terms of privilege, that was my first understanding that my perceptions of what you might be were different from the potential of what you could be.

I've met people that can't get out of a certain lifestyle because of how stuck they are, especially if that’s what they are born into. I think about it a lot.

What was one pivotal moment in your life, and how did it influence you?

When I was younger, living on a timeline meant a lot to me.

Maybe around high school through college, people start to build a little plan for their lives. You know, I'll probably be married by a certain time, probably have kids and a house, that sort of thing. And once I hit the age of 25, which was the time I thought all of these big milestones would have happened, I realized I didn't care. It was nice—I allowed myself enjoyment of whatever was happening in my life at that moment. I wasn't letting my previous expectations take me down. I'm really proud of myself for getting to a point where I'm okay with just being. And obviously, you should do what makes you happy. There's nothing wrong with getting married and buying a house at 25 either. But personally, I realized holding myself to an internal clock did not make me happy. It didn't spark joy. 

Where are you from and how has being from your home shaped who you are today?

As I mentioned before, I'm from South Korea and I was adopted. One of my sisters actually decided to search for my birth parents. She found them a little over 10 years ago, and we all flew out there to meet them. I think it was right around Mother's Day, right after Cinco de Mayo.

It was a lovely, crazy experience, like this new version of home that I was being introduced to.

Not only did it open me up to a brand new culture that I wasn't used to, it also influenced my outlook on life and introduced an interest in seeing more of the world. Growing up, we were raised largely in the suburbs of New Jersey, and going to college in Connecticut, those weren't the most diverse settings. My visit there with my sisters felt like a hugely pivotal moment. Oh, and the food! I love having such different types of home cooking from my adopted parents and my birth parents. I love to cook. 

[That's amazing! How did she find them?]

It's a little bit of a long story, but my basic understanding was that it was a relatively long process, I think a couple of years. She started at the adoption agency, Spence-Chapin in New York. They led her to some breadcrumbs in Korea and she ended up at the foster care facility that had us before we came over to America. Then from there, she actually got an investigator to look into the names of our birth parents. It was really crazy because she actually went to go visit the village where the investigators thought that our parents lived. They had narrowed it down to a name and a location, a small store, and when they went to visit, they knocked and no one answered. So they called around and talked to some neighbors, who told them, "Well, the names you have don't sound quite right, but there's this couple in a different area you should try talking to instead." So they called, someone picked up, and they asked, "Did you have triplets back in 1988?" She had found them. I remember being so amazed. On top of that, my sister was teaching English in Korea at the time, and the place she was rooming was literally a block away from where we were born. So serendipitous!

[How was it meeting your birth parents?]

It was really interesting. I was originally on the side of the fence that if I never met them, I'd be okay with that, just because of how awesome my parents are. I'd also heard horror stories about people who'd met their birth parents and been told they didn't want to ever see them again, out of shame or regret. That would be such a sad experience. Thankfully, that definitely was not the case for us. Additionally, our family grew—we found out we had two brothers!

When we were there, our family also experienced this magical moment. There's this mountain in Korea that my sisters and I really wanted to climb. Before we met our birth parents, we had this short three-day buffer, and we decided to give it a try. Long story short, we get there, it starts to torrential downpour, and we can't actually enjoy this mountain. A couple of days later, after meeting the parents, they asked us if there was anything we wanted to see or do in Korea, so we brought up the mountain again. They were like, "Great! Yes, let's go there." We had a translator, of course. So we're walking up this mountain, and mind you, my birth father actually had a really bad case of polio, so his legs are pretty deformed, but he had a walking cane and was so strong on that hike. As we're walking up, my friend slash translator told us, "Oh, your birth father just said this is where he and your mother had their first date." That pulled at my heartstrings so much. It was like the rain from a few days earlier had been a sign. We would have totally missed sharing this moment with them. It was so perfect.

[That sounds really nice. Everything worked out as it should.]

It did. I'm very happy that we met, and I would hate it if we hadn’t at this point. It's a really good thing.

And we try to keep in touch. My sister lived there for another 10 years afterwards, so she saw them frequently and I would communicate through her. We have a little group chat going and we all try to post pictures every once in a while.

What's one thing that always reminds you of home?

One thing that reminds me of home? The Jersey Shore, for sure. Almost all my summers were spent there. That's what family feels like for me, too—when I think of family, I immediately think of the Jersey Shore. It's a place that we'd always go visit. Everything, down to the boardwalks and the crazy Jersey food that you buy down there, all the deep fried dough and pizza that's so bad for you. That reminds me of home. 

What's something that you've accomplished that you're proud of?

After many, many years of not picking up my viola I got the itch to jam with friends from high school. Yeah, string quartets can “jam”, ha! So I contacted some folks who I used to play with and we formed a string quartet that played down in Asbury Park, NJ. We had a regular monthly set where we’d play classical music the first half, take a break, drink a beer, and then play pop covers. It was so fun. I was extremely happy when I did an arrangement for us — Ginuwine’s Pony. Yes, the stripper song. It was a hit!  Sadly commuting from New York to New Jersey wasn’t sustainable for us and we had to call it quits, but I really wish I could do it all over again!

What's something about yourself that you don't like talking about?

I was extremely ashamed of being Asian growing up. I didn’t look like everyone else and certainly didn’t like to be reminded of it. Looking back, Asian depiction in the media was terrible, and I’m sure that fed into it. I just wasn’t exposed to Asian people, having grown up in a white community, and when I was it became uncomfortable.  I think about that and am so embarrassed that I even felt that way. I remember one instance where another Asian girl said I wasn’t Asian enough, so I just didn’t feel like exploring my heritage for a long time.

I’ve come a long way and I’m working on being more open about this.

What's one thing that you wish you could share about your culture with the world?

From a Korean standpoint, and this is new for me, any Korean food is so delicious. If I could ever cook that, to the best of my abilities, I'd be happy to share that with the world. I truly think that food is such a unifying thing—for people to come around a table and share something in that way and have conversation with each other. Yeah, I'd share Korean food.

What would people be surprised to know about you outside of everything that we've talked about?

I am an introvert. It takes a lot of energy for me to socialize with strangers, or even a group of three or more friends at a time. Certain people can energize me though, so I think that also makes me an ambivert?

How do you feel sharing this stuff?

It's kind of cathartic. Yeah. I used to do—and this is going to sound so funny!—back when I was living in New York, I would do date nights, with myself. I was trying to be more individualistic. I also wanted to know my neighborhood a little bit better, so I would go out to a bar, get a drink, and try to strike up a conversation with whoever sat next to me knowing I might never see them again. So this kind of feels like a very similar experience.

Last question. Can you please reintroduce yourself?

Hi! I'm Megan V. I'm on my journey to share more of myself with the world.