Brittany Hawley, 22, also was in search of a stronger sense of identity and belonging that adoptees often crave.
Brittany Hawley just did an 8,000-mile pop-in. She traveled from her Glendale apartment and arrived, unannounced, in a rural village in Vietnam.
Brittany had come to see her birth mother.
The 22-year-old also was in search of a stronger sense of identity and belonging that adoptees often crave.
"She didn't know I was coming. I surprised her, and she probably thought I would never come. Because, who does that? Most people who are adopted, at least internationally, never get that chance," Brittany told me.
A West Allis couple, Arthur and Karen Hawley, flew to Vietnam in September 1995 and adopted the 2-month-old infant originally called Tran Thile Thuy at the orphanage. They renamed her Brittany Tran Hawley and brought her home to grow up in the United States.
The years passed happily for her. She felt proud and unique telling people she was adopted. It was irritating when insensitive people asked if she wanted to know her "real parents" back in Vietnam.
"I was an only child and often got lonely, but I had a great childhood for the most part."
Brittany graduated from West Allis Nathan Hale High School in 2013, receiving mostly A grades. She continued as an excellent student at Cardinal Stritch University where she majored in psychology and sociology and gave the commencement address. She graduated in December and now works at Rogers Behavioral Health in Oconomowoc as a residential counselor focusing on eating disorders.
Two things happened while she was in college that first made Brittany feel pain from being adopted. One was an assignment where she researched the meaning of her name. Brittany chose her Vietnamese name for the project and, suddenly, her country of origin was feeling more like a real place.
The second was the death of her adoptive father in 2014. He had stomach cancer and died at age 67. She calls him her best friend, and she thrived on his supportive and encouraging nature.
Her parents had divorced and now she was feeling adrift. She is not close to her adoptive mother, and these days she considers friends and faculty from Stritch and high school as her family.
"People only see the rainbow and butterfly version of adoption. No one sees the not pretty side of adoption, where pain, trauma and abandonment issues surface," Brittany said.
In the womb, she heard her mother's voice for nine months, and then not again. Brittany was taken away from her country, her culture, her language. As an Asian child in a white family, she felt pressure to live up to high expectations.
"Consciously as a kid, I didn't think of this," she said. "But as an adult looking back, I had to get good grades and be perfect. Otherwise, I could be given away just like that. I was replaceable, at least it seemed that way. Sometimes it still does."
In 2016, Brittany went through her father's safety deposit box and found adoption papers, including her birth mother's name, Tran Thi Minh Loi, and address. Over the next year and a half, the daughter and mother exchanged letters, each writing in her own language.
Brittany told her mother about her life, and Loi talked mostly about her pain, poor health and poverty. She was 39 and in poor health when she reluctantly gave up her daughter for adoption.
"My heart aches for my poor daughter who had to leave her motherland from the moment she was born," Loi said in one letter that Brittany had translated into English. "They said that when you turn 18, they will let you reunite with me."
Brittany knew of no such promise, but she decided rather suddenly to go and find her birth mother. On Feb. 8, she flew Chicago to Seoul and then on to Hanoi where she met a translator who helped her. On Feb. 11, they rode two buses and a taxi to Loi's village, Goi Thuong in the Ha Nam province of northern Vietnam.
They met a woman who led them to Loi's sister and then to Loi. She rode up on a bicycle.
"Was this really real? The day I had thought about for years was happening in front of me, and none of it felt real. She did not cry and neither did I. But she looked so happy. So, so happy. I felt like I was in shock," Brittany said.
The two women shook hands and held hands as they walked, but they never embraced. Brittany wasn't sure if this typically was done in their culture. They walked to Loi's farm home and then two others. Word of the surprise visitor spread quickly, and soon they were joined by various relatives and neighbors. Brittany and Loi had no time alone.
Everyone talked furiously, and Brittany did her best to keep up with the help of her translator. People were telling her to move back to Vietnam, learn the language and raise a family there, but Brittany struggled to feel any familial connection to these strangers, even her mother.
She was shocked to learn that her mother had given birth to a son before Brittany was born and she kept this child. Loi said Brittany's birth father abandoned her while she was pregnant.
Villagers complimented Brittany on her light skin, which didn't help her identity crisis. Some of the men told racist jokes. Dinner was served and she was teased about not knowing how to use chopsticks.
Jet-lagged and disoriented, Brittany was there just four hours and left feeling "even more in-between than before." Back at her hotel room in Hanoi, she couldn't stop sobbing. She spent the next few days as a tourist before returning home.
Brittany doesn't regret the journey in search of her roots, but she's still processing how it left her feeling. She didn't form a real bond with her mother in Vietnam that day, and she doesn't expect to return there.
"I think I did a lot of things wrong with my awful Western self, but I tried," she said. "I did something beyond scary that most people don't ever get the chance to do."