Exploring with April Williamson

A Q&A with blogger, podcaster, KAD merch creator, community advocate, friend, and woman taking zero s*** and all the names

You ever meet someone and just… know, without a doubt, that they get it? Whatever “it” is for you at the time, that’s it. You start talking and soon you’re in a 3-person chat group called something nonsensical, cackling to yourself at inside jokes before falling asleep, hopping on video chats at random times, exchanging secrets from your past you thought were locked away forever… until you find someone who… well, gets it.

For me, that’s been April.

I first learned of her when she started making stickers and t-shirts for some of us who join a weekly Korean Adoptee “Zoom” call… It’s possible she thought they were silly until we all leapt in the air and landed on board like fish out of water, frantically flopping around on the deck, looking to get off of dry land and back into the sea.

I’m not sure how far I can stretch that metaphor, but for now I’ll say: there’s a bunch of us swimming around like one, big school of fish - moving and navigating our way around sharp turns and obstacles we encounter, pushing each other along, and having lots of adult bevvies along the way. April and I are part of the school. We’re passing notes, giggling over the shenanigans, and - frankly - having a blast.

Here you’ll find a very honest conversation between two women who are leaving their 30s far, far behind them, who have been through some stuff, and - all jokes aside - aim to move forward living our best lives as our most authentic, unapologetic versions. Anyone who wishes to join us, may. But we will no longer sacrifice our Selves or people-please our way into anyone following along. If you’re not our people now, perhaps you never were to begin with.

Follow April @deepsouthkorean on Instagram and discover some seriously fun Korean adoptee merch on her website, along with her blog. Be prepared for some laughs on her TikTok and YouTube channel.

Oh! And if you’re a Korean adoptee and reading this before September 27, 2025, she’s hosting a virtual “Drunk Korean History” event at 8:00 p.m. EST. Grab an adult beverage and fill out the form to join!

Here’s me and April:

Was there a moment when there was the catalyst for you exploring your Korean adoptee identity and this part of your life?

I think - from a lot of adoptees that I've met recently - they come out of the fog and then that kind of disrupts their whole life. They get a divorce or they change their friend group… But for me, it was a little bit reversed.

I think for the longest time, I just thought that my depression and anxiety was because of this really tragic thing that happened to me when I was young and caused me to have a mental breakdown.

My best friend died in a car accident. And at the time, she was the only person I didn't have to mask around. Now that I'm older, I realize just how deep and what a big deal that truly was.

Because, even though she was just this little white girl from West Virginia, she was incredibly intelligent and very progressive and exactly the type of person that I would want to surround myself with today. I think it's a disservice to the world that she did not get to live longer.

After my divorce, my therapist started to ask different questions.

We started to realize that perhaps the reason for my need for therapy went way beyond that incident that happened when I was 16. Perhaps that was more of the catalyst or a triggering event in and of itself. Because as an international adoptee, I feel like we all have a little bit of CPTSD <Complex PTSD>.

I'm not saying that as a way to give us a scapegoat or to victimize ourselves. But I think it's something that we kind of have to accept and discuss as a factual thing in order to figure out how we need to navigate this world.

Whenever I got a divorce, I realized that ex-husband was abusive, and I would never have chosen him if I had better examples of healthy relationships and healthy love in my life. Unfortunately, I just didn't really have that, and so it made it acceptable whenever he would yell at me, or say terrible things, or just have an insane rage fit.

Because - and a lot of this is also because I was raised in the Bible Belt - he didn't hit me and I can't prove that he cheated on me. So, “stand by your man, Loretta Lynn.”

10 to 15 years of my life were just completely lost because I just thought that I was doing what I was supposed to do and be a ‘good wife.’

But the truth of the matter is: I was just putting myself through more narcissistic abuse and more trauma because I didn't know any better. And once I got divorced and started to kind of rebuild my life, my therapist diagnosed me, and we started to look at my “why” a little bit deeper, I also started to look at my friend circle. While I think that they're still good people, they were not necessarily good friends to me during my divorce.

And part of it could be because of who I am as a person. When you're the “strong one,” when you're the people pleaser, it kind of anesthetizes other people to your needs. And then whenever you show up one day and you're like, Okay, it's my turn! I need some support!

And their response is: Oh, I don't know what to do with you. And they look away and hope that it fixes itself because you've just been so good at it in the past... A lot of that happened during my divorce.

And I remember saying to a friend afterwards, “Thank you for not being a better friend. I'm really glad that you didn't meet me where I needed you to be, because if you had been better friends, then I wouldn't have felt the need to go find better. I wouldn't have felt the need to build a network and a community.”

So, I never would have started making content, especially because most of them think it's kind of cringe. And I never would have felt the urgency to buy a ticket to KAAN <Korean Adoptee Adoptive Family Network Conference> even though I didn't know a lot of people. Because that can be a scary and intimidating experience, but look at all that I've gained.

And at the risk of sounding like Pollyanna - because I do acknowledge the bullshit and my life is most definitely not where I would like it to be… She's still struggling for sure - but I'm in a happier, more content place because I don't feel the need to perform anymore for my own security.

In my old life, that was all that I was doing. I was just doing this endless tap dance to keep everybody around me cheering, because I felt like, as long as they were clapping, they would never notice that I didn't belong there. Once I started to kind of step into my own and choose myself more and find more aligned people - because that's what I think it is - at least with my friend group, right?

<Those old friends and people in my life weren’t wrong>; they're just wrong for me. And that doesn't make them bad. That doesn't make me bad.

We've kind of outgrown each other and we have different goals and priorities in our lives. It doesn’t mean that we have to have a dramatic falling out, but it does mean that it has been necessary for me to find more.

I think having this level of trauma that we have as adoptees just puts you in a different position for retrospection than other people tend to have.

But yeah. It's kind of put me on this trajectory of just living out loud.

I've found it incredibly encouraging from other people who interact with my content and other friends in the KAD <Korean Adoptee> community who randomly send me messages saying “thank you for saying the things that I don't have the courage to say myself.” I do have this tendency to speak very boldly without any reserve.

One day that might catch up with me. <laughs> But for today, we will do it with as much wit as we absolutely can.

You hit on many things: attachment, modeling love, abandonment, relationships. We probably won't get to all of it. But one of the things that I wanted to pull from what you just said is two things that are related.

There is, in my opinion, a real nuanced, very complex thing that is happening that not everybody will get to in their lives. It's not just that we have this lived experience as Korean adoptees. And the reason it hits so hard is not just because of that shared experience and built-in community, but because we're all working on ourselves as a result of that one experience.

It - the shared experience - could be anything.

But finding people who are not just being complacent in life, I think is what you're talking about. There's a real intentionality there, which I think is great.

Also, again, it’s worth repeating: this is complex. You're not saying: Oh, woe is me! All these things happened to me!

Everybody's got their stuff.

What you're saying is: because of the work of therapy, really looking at your life critically from a 30,000 foot view, and having the space to do that, however you arrived, there are things that we do that attract the wrong things and circumstances to our lives.

Absolutely.

And we don't know for so long. And I think many people, and this is not a fault thing, this is just a circumstantial thing, are in survival mode our whole lives.

If we have the good fortune to be in a position where we're able to pull ourselves out, to look at ourselves in that way, to say: “You know what, I did allow this situation to be enabled. I didn't know that that wasn't love. I did have a bad communication style with my partner, because I didn't know how else to deal, or whatever.” And so I think it is so much both-and. And what you said is so important.

You said so many important things.

Taking it a step further and seeing: okay, because we've had to live for so many other people, because our lives started out as being a little bit of a pawn for a few different places: governments, one family, another family, their story was our story… Emerging from that is a really big deal. And so you're a rock star.

And I also think, man, to go through something like that when you're 16… It's hard enough to be 16 no matter where you live in the entire world and what your life circumstances are. But because we start off so emotionally needy and having special needs in our situation <as adoptees>, already having been abandoned and having attachment issues, you lose this person in your life at such an age... You had to be so strong to come through that.

So, I just wanted to say that out loud. I'm like, I'm so devastated for you and for her and for everyone.

Big, big stuff. Anyway.

Where do you think you are right now in your identity journey?

I have come to accept that identity is like most things on a spectrum. I've always kind of been the type of person who acknowledges that I can edit my avatar however I want. And I've never shied away from how that might be perceived by people.

I work in corporate, but I've been hired in a corporate setting with purple hair and a nose ring and still fought the odds against that. So Korean identity, American identity, you know, I have accepted that that's kind of just where I am on any given day. Clearly, I don’t subscribe to living in boxes.

There's days when I'm eating pinto beans and cornbread, where I definitely feel more Appalachian until I look around at all the little side dishes. And I'm like, Oh, did I just make banchan out of pinto beans? Like, I think I did! So, you know, as far as who I am as a whole, as a person in my identity, I think I'm finally at a place where the 18-year-old version of myself wanted to be, but everybody around her said, “You're too loud. You're too angry. You're too opinionated. You're just too much.”

And now I'm kind of at the point where it's like, well, then go find less because on the other side of the trauma coin is that once you've survived a certain amount of things, it kind of makes you somewhat of an asshole or a badass.

I was married to <insert my ex-husband's name> for almost 10 years.

You're going to have to get up earlier in the day to hurt my feelings, babe. Like, I survived him. You're going to have to cut off a limb or something, because you're not trying hard enough for me. And - that's another thing - people will comment or, you know, speak on how I respond to haters on the internet or how I get a little snippy and snarky with people. And that's honestly the energy of where it comes from.

Like, I lived with him for 13 years and you think your crusty ass is going to hurt my feelings. Sorry, babe. This is just a Tuesday for me.

So, I don't know. I think that's kind of like the stereotypical thing for women, too. You get into your late thirties and early forties and you're like, “Oh, I don't have to listen to what any of you say.”

It's a total reclamation. I mean, if this is the baseline and we're starting out a little bit under it because we're having to navigate being a different race from everybody in our lives, figuring that out, and being confused, but being told we shouldn't be confused.

And that's just one section of a tiny piece.

And then to be told you talk too much, you're too loud. You should want to just get married and have kids. (I know something about that too.)

So, it's a reclamation phase that I think we're all in. And that's why I also think we find our people. But yeah, I like it.

I like it a lot.

What's been the biggest lesson theme or takeaway that you can apply to your journey?

Put the oxygen mask on your face first.

You can use the “pour into your own cup analogy.” You can tell people that you're not being an asshole for choosing yourself and making boundaries.

But when you've got built in trauma that has told you that your feelings are not as important as someone else's, when you have been the subject of someone else's narcissistic needs, when you've been their feeding source… You don't know what it's like to have autonomy over your emotions and your wants and needs, because your wants and needs were constantly being molded as a reaction to someone else's. So, the easiest thing - to kind of just cut straight to it - is put your oxygen mask on first.

They tell you that on a flight. Why? Because if you pass out because you aren't getting air, you can't help nobody. And I've become a better person.

Five years ago, I was resentful. I was bitter. And granted, I had reason.

But it probably didn't make me a great wife either. Even though I did a lot of shit I probably shouldn't have for his benefit. But I wasn't all lovey-dovey when I saw him because I was irritated with the motherfucker.

Oh, sorry. Okay. <laughs> But yeah, you know, same thing with just me as a person.

I did not have patience for other people because I was living in my survival mode of: You want me to feel sorry for you right now? Because you scuffed your nail? I'm sorry. Let me go find my little violin and my pack of cheese and wine for you so that we can have a little party. Like, I was that kind of person.

And now I have just a little bit more tolerance for that. Because I think it's necessary. Does everyone always need to have space to be an Eeyore? No.

But I think sometimes people need to have an Eeyore moment in order to feel like they've been heard to get to the next point, and I didn't have space for a lot of things when I was trying so hard to just get through the day. But now I'm not filling my glass up with everyone else's unnecessary petty problems or their opinions of me.

I don't worry about that anymore. I don't get mad at friends because they don't make plans or because they do things without me.

That's cool. Because guess what? I can do that, too. I can find other people who actually want to spend time with me. So yeah, that's been the biggest thing for me.

I think it's affected not just the quality of my life but the quality of who I am as a person. Without the resentment, I have more room for understanding and awareness for my own culpability in all of my relationships.

One of the things that I'm constantly trying to remember is to not be responsible for anyone else's reactions or feelings.

I also combine that with: I always think that there is a kind way to make someone feel whole, even if you're calling them an asshole. That's my own thing. But my point being, what I think you're saying too: you get to in this reclamation phase, say and respond however feels good for you.

And you know what? That's their work to do on their end. You don't have to be responsible for how they react, what they say, if they do or don't respond, because they should be doing their own work, just the same as you're doing your own work.

One of the things I heard about as I started doing Enneagram work is that as a 3… (And I think this is true of anybody, especially in the feelings triad) When we start doing work on ourselves - and this is for anyone, especially if you're the people pleaser, which all adoptees are - When we start doing work on ourselves, everybody hates it, because then we stop doing for other people. And then what you're seeing is, yeah, well, where are my safety nets?

So, I love this reflection. Okay. What has been the biggest surprise for you on this journey?

That if you choose yourself and you start to live your life in the way that you would want it to be, even if you're not there yet, it actually works.

I remember when I was in the middle of my divorce, renting a room from my friend - and literally it was just a room - Everything I owned was shoved in this room. And I just remember thinking: you are living the life that you've chosen.

I was like, The hell I am! I didn't choose this! What?

But as we were talking about earlier, you learn your diagnosis, and you learn how you put yourself in certain positions, and you ignore red flags.

So, yeah, I did. I chose that man. And I chose to stay with that man until he ran us into the ground and I literally could not go anymore. And then I still made choices. Were there good options to choose from? No, but I still had to choose my heart in that moment. And I remember listening to people say, “choose yourself.”

Stop waiting for other people to meet you where you are and be intentional. I got into Mel Gibson's, not Mel Gibson. Jesus. <laughs> Wrong Mel, way wrong Mel. <both laugh> Let Them.

He knew what women want, according to that movie. <laughs>

But not really.

Mel Robbins. I know, I love Mel Robbins.

Yeah. Yes.

I started listening to her podcast and then when it came out, I read the book. I was already kind of working towards that mindset anyway, but it was just nice to have someone give you that kind of validation, because you're right. When you are making those changes, people don't like it and then you feel like you're withholding. So yeah, that was very surprising to me. That, if you just started to disappear for a year, and work on yourself, and do these things, you come out on the other side with things that you never would have thought you would have.

I wouldn't have the Korean adoptee merch now because I wouldn't have had Korean adoptees to sell it to and I wouldn't have a podcast or a website. There's an insane amount of things that I would not have had if I had just accepted my fate and been complacent in it.

What's been the biggest challenge or hurdle?

Getting through the icky part of not being a people pleaser anymore.

Do you have an example of when?

It's that moment when you are acting on your boundaries because boundaries aren't necessarily this declaration of a separation or a line in the sand. I'm not going to come to you and say, Well, Jenna, we haven't been working out the way I thought, so I'm not going to call you anymore and if you want to hang out with me, you've got to do this. But it's more of, okay, if they only call to invite me to something the day of or the day before, even though I've expressed to them in the past that my schedule doesn't allow that, then I'm not going to make myself go and I'm not going to make myself feel bad about it if I don't go.

I'm also going to communicate with them so that there isn't any question, because I think sometimes we get caught up in our behavior- addiction, trauma- and we just assume that this is how it'll be, so we just don't say anything. Or we avoid it all together because we “know how this will end.” Then we hold people accountable for things they don’t know. So, instead of saying “no” or bending over backwards to adjust my schedule, I communicated. . “Hey, I'd love to do that with you guys, but I can't because you didn't give me enough notice… Yeah, I would love to hang out tonight, but I actually already have plans. Maybe if you'd asked me like a week ago, I probably would have been able to make time for it.”

It’s that icky feeling because, you know, we're adults. We should be able to communicate those things with each other.

I have also learned as I've met other people that that's not really an uncommon thing to do–communication and coordination. It's just showing respect for people's time and not assuming that you're sitting around waiting for me to pick up the phone and invite you to something. And it also comes back to that intention that people have to want to spend time with you to make sure that they don't exclude you.

I've seen that sampled and modeled in our <Korean adoptee chat> group. So, I know it's not impossible to do.

What has brought you the most joy?

So far, it has just been surviving this far. If I’m being honest, - when I was younger - I wasn’t so sure I’d still be alive at this point in my life. That I would see this age. Five years ago, I didn’t know how I was going to survive coming out of that divorce. On one hand, it was very easy, we had less than nothing so there wasn’t anything to fight over. I wanted so badly - so much - to not have anything to do with him anymore, I thought, I’ll just eat the debt. I'm still digging myself out of the hole, but I'm good. I’m not saying there aren’t nights when I don’t feel a little bit lost. You know, I have you guys but we’re all spread out, so I can’t just call you and go for coffee. But I'm in a solid and healthy place now.

It takes a lot of hard work to get there, so I give you lots of props. I used to think therapy was just talking about what you did that day. It turns out, it’s a lot harder than that, so to be aware, get data for yourself, make changes - and sometimes, it’s just time - which unfortunately, we can’t just rush along, so I fully understand what you mean by that.

What does belonging mean to you. What does it mean to belong?

For me that has come to be alignment with the right people and knowing that relationships are work on any level for sure, but I think when you’re with the right people, it doesn’t always feel like labored work

Where do you feel you belong?

I’m developing a mindset that I belong exactly wherever I am in whatever space. I actually work in a blue collar manufacturing industry with lots of men. I think stereotypically people would not expect me to get along with them or even excel as much as I do, but I worked my way in and figured out a space for myself there and I can honestly say that I do feel respected which I don’t know that a lot of women of color can necessarily say that in corporate settings all of the time. Especially in demographics where they might not fit the typical profile. Has it always felt that way, no. <laughs> but at the end of the day, I know my voice is heard.

Well, they do, because you are being unapologetically who you are, which it’s counterintuitive. Broad strokes - we’re taught as women: be quieter, be accommodating, and people will like you more. So, we’re always afraid - I’ll speak for myself - I’m always afraid that I’ve made someone upset. Like, constant tip-toeing. But eventually, it’s just that we act more and more like and who we are. That’s just who we are. We gave everything that we could give. THat’s just what you get. You actually start to feel less concerned that you’ve upset someone, because you think, I’ve given you everything. This is who I am. So, if you don’t like it, I actually don’t care, because I haven’t held anything back . We’re just saving ourselves time, now!

This is what comes from being 40, April!

<both laugh>

If only my brain would have been this fit when my body was! <laughs>

I will echo - connecting people and I want to be a resource for Korean adoptees. I’ve jumped in all hands-on with any opportunity that came my way. I’ve got a website, merch, a blog, and content, and potentially a book. That’s kind of where I am! I’m trying to hone my voice. I do feel a pull to speak up for any Asian American community, honestly, whether it’s Korean American, the BIPOC community, the Asian American diaspora, in general. I have felt a calling, of sorts, to use my audacity for good. <laughs>

Questions? Comments? Leave a comment here and I’ll respond to it on my Spotify Podcast: Exploring with Jenna Lee Kim in an “unplugged” and unscripted way! You can also email me at jenna.tae.hee.kim@gmail.com