Born in 1973 in Korea, Sidse was adopted to a Danish family when she was 4 ½ years old. The process was so traumatic for her that she does not recall her first two years in Denmark. She eventually realized that she was going to be taken care of and became very attached to her dad.
As a child, I have felt safe. I have had all of the opportunities in the world. It must have felt wrong as an adoptee [growing up] to question things. I was afraid of hurting my parents, but still I was not happy. I have never experienced bullying and always had friends, but still I felt I didn’t belong and I couldn’t explain it. It was looking at the mirror that made me feel different from my friends.”
I was 40 years old when I first reunited with my biological father in Korea. Even though we know that we can’t speak the same language, we were able to understand each other at times with just body language. I felt comfortable around him even though he was a stranger.”
If I have any suggestions for anyone else who is doing a search [for their biological family], you should just go for it and do what’s necessary because if that’s what you feel you need to carry on and be a happy person, then that’s what you should do. You might have obstacles, or have a bad outcome, you might not find them or they might be dead. But just knowing something, the facts, that’s what every adoptee urges to have. Who am I? What happened to me? Why was I put to adoption?”