My eyes remain in a trance-like state as I process the email from Ha-eun*—my case worker from the National Center for the Rights of the Child:

Dec. 13, 2019 at 3:57 a.m.
I will closely look at your file and I will try to get more information through hospital and several different police station.
I will send you email in next week!!

I close my Gmail app and put down my phone. A sharp tightness moves from my jaw to my neck, shoulders and chest. Not even so much of a trace of Ha-eun acknowledging her colossal mistake: mixing my birth file with another Korean adoptee also named Heather. Someone who coincidentally also lives in New York and was visiting Seoul at the same time as me. I gently close my eyes and take a deep breath through my nose and count. One. Two. Three. Following the inhale, I hold my breath for one second and then proceed to exhale through my mouth deeply for another three seconds. My chest feels a bit lighter. I repeat the breathing exercise two more times.

I found out about the mix-up last night from Dae,* who worked for an adoptee-led nonprofit in Korea that supports adoptees with their birth family searches. Just four days ago, he had excitedly informed me that Ha-eun had found my birth mother, had a three-minute phone call with her, and that she was in shock and not ready to speak or meet with me.

Too upset to respond to Ha-eun immediately, I wait to respond. If she isn’t going to address it, I know I have to call her out.

Dec. 13, 2019 at 5:01 p.m.
While I understand that mistakes happen and am grateful for your assistance with my birth mother search, I’m deeply upset by this mix-up. I’ve been on a rollercoaster of emotions for the past week. When you get a chance, please send my adoption records to me and provide me with an update on my birth mother search.

Two days later, I receive a response from Ha-eun:

Dec. 15, 2019 at 8:02 p.m.
I am terribly sorry again because of this big confusion and mistake.

I did not have cases with same names usually before but nowadays there was two Heather’s cases and I was totally confused about this. 

When Dae mentioned the name Heather, I thought the other case, and I should have checked about this carefully and still I feel really.. really sorry about this. . .

I want to say that I will gonna do my best to find your birth mother, I already made a big mistake regarding your case, I mean the confusion about two Heather names, and I don’t want to make any mistakes and I want to help you with my best.

I want to say sorry one time again, and I will try to keep update the status.

I stare at the email on my phone for five minutes. Then read it again, glaring at the grammatical errors and counting the number of “sorries.” One. Two. Three. Is she being genuine? 

Since my adoptive mother’s death at age 39 in 1995, I’ve developed a strong aversion to “I’m sorry.” These two words transport me to my 10-year-old-self at a funeral home surrounded by a sea of white faces who relay the same empty phrase: “I’m sorry.” Those words were not going to resurrect my mother. Why are you sorry? You didn’t kill my mother. Multiple sclerosis killed her!

In my anguish, I overlook the new information from Ha-eun:

In your adoption records, that I am sharing with you now, there’s only your birth mother’s family name and it said “the birth mother seemed to be about 25 years old” But in 2014, the clinic, which is 나 산부인과 in Korean, provided more information of your birth mother like age and rough address.

The age that clinic provided was 33 years old and address was Jongno-gu in Seoul.

Also there was saying that your birth mother and father, they were married and they had 2 boys at that time.

Those information is all the information that I have now.

Actually I think 25 and 33 is quite different age, so I will gonna contact the clinic and find out whether they provided correct information before.

Also I will try to find more information through the clinic, and I will gonna try police search based on the information that I found.

So those things are my plans for your birth search.

When my husband (then fiancé) and I met with Ha-eun and Dae at the National Center for the Rights of the Child in Seoul on October 23, 2019, I trusted them wholeheartedly with my birth mother search. I first connected with Global Overseas Adoptees’ Link (G.O.A.’L.)  in September through one of my close Korean adoptee friends. Dae was assigned to my case. I felt safe, supported, and comfortable with Dae as my point of contact due to his genuine desire to help me find my birth mother, attention to detail, and responsiveness.

After a dead-end meeting with the social worker at my adoption agency, Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS), my drive and hopefulness for searching for my birth mother returned after visiting with Ha-eun and Dae. They both appeared kind and compassionate about my case, compared with the robotic social workers at ESWS who refused to give me copies of all the pages in my birth file and even redacted my birth mother’s name—Huh Ok Ja—after I saw it on the original document. But the mix-up completely shattered my faith and trust in Ha-eun and Dae.

“Sorry” doesn’t make up for the throbbing pain in my forehead and heart and bile lingering in my liver and gallbladder. There is no room for error when helping adoptees with their birth family searches. Instead, an extra layer of sensitivity and care must be applied. Mixing up a birth file, saying “sorry,” and expecting the adoptee to continue with the search devalues an adoptee’s humanity. Did Ha-eun ever make this mistake before? How come she and Dae did not double check the information before contacting me? I wonder how the other “Heather” feels about the mix-up (despite the slightly more positive turnout for her).

Huh Ok Ja is once again a phantom. I’m back to the beginning of my search with no leads. I’m back to fantasizing origin stories of my birth mother. Is she alive? Is she dead? Is she from royalty? Is she a North Korean defector? 

After finally “coming out of the fog,” I find myself in the fog again since the mix-up, standing in a vast thicket of oak trees. A hissing cloud-like mist of gray, yellow, and green covers the entire forest. My feet start sinking into the soil. Rather than resisting the quicksand, I allow it to continue swallowing me until my body is deep into the ground. I reluctantly wake up from my daydream.

I’m completely numb. I don’t want to feel anything—especially this mixture of loneliness, despair, rage, hurt, and frustration. I want to escape into a scene from Men in Black where Agent J and Agent K magically pop up and erase my memory when I was delivered the fake news that my birth mother was located and was aware of my presence. This is the only way to rekindle my true desire and passion to find my birth mother. I would much rather restart than resume the search.

*Please note that names have been changed.