Middle-Aged Woman Learns The Stunning Truth Behind Her Adoption

She was told her family left her behind at a hospital in South Korea because she was too sick to care for, but in spite of the betrayal, Denise couldn't leave the past behind. That frustration and pain, coupled with the fact that she felt alone in her hometown of Vermont, convinced her that she needed to find her own way.

Her adoptive parents were white, and they lived in an area where there were no other Asian people. It didn't necessarily mean that Denise was unloved or always treated differently, but it was an everyday challenge to fit in. As she grew into adulthood, she realized that following her heart and discovering her native roots was something she had to do.

It was around the time she turned 40, in 2016, that Denise first traveled to South Korea, where she was born. She didn't know what she would find there, but she hoped it would come with closure. It turned out to be more eventful than she could have hoped.

While in South Korea, Denise came across a government program that helped South Korean adoptees find their biological parents. All she had to do was send in a piece of her DNA, and hopefully, there would be a match. She wound up waiting for four years, but found that the wait was worth it in the end.

After she returned to the U.S., she eagerly waited for the DNA test results for the next four years. Then, one day in early October of 2020, she received a phone call from the South Korean program — they'd found a match! The problem, however, was that she was not allowed to see them.

With the coronavirus pandemic in full swing, people had to stay socially distant, so international travel wasn't an option. Even so, when Denise heard about her biological family, she still couldn't help but feel overjoyed, and she proposed an alternative.

Denise waited with baited breath in front of her laptop for the Zoom video meeting to begin. She wasn't sure what to expect, but the questions kept spinning in her head — what are they like? Why would they leave me? She knew she'd have her answers soon, and when the cameras began rolling, so did the tears.

The meeting began at last. Denise's mother, sister, and brother were virtually sitting right in front of her. Even with their face masks on, she could see the tears and emotions pouring out of them right away. They didn't look like people who would deliberately abandon a helpless baby, in fact, that's not what happened at all.

Denise's family shared the whole story, starting with Denise's birth name. Her older brother, twin sister, and omma — which is the Korean word for mom — called her Sang-Ae, and explained how she'd gone missing for a little over four decades.

It happened back in 1976, when Denise and her twin sister, Sang-Hee, were only about 2 years old. On one warm day in June, their grandmother took the twins out to the market, which was dreadfully busy at the time. There were so many people that their grandmother lost sight of both of them at once. She didn't waste any time trying to find them.

Their grandma looked high and low for both her granddaughters, and at last, she found Sang-Hee, but Sang-Ae — now Denise — was nowhere to be found. The family was broken up about the loss. Their father completely lost himself to alcoholism over the grief, but they never gave up hope in the end.

While the father struggled to hold himself together, eventually dying of liver disease about 20 years later, the family kept themselves together as best as they could. They never left the neighborhood, never stopped making flyers to find Denise, and even came up with a clever plan in hopes that they'd cross paths with her again.

The family set up a shop of their own in the very same market where Denise went missing as a toddler. They hoped she'd come back in search of her family, but there was no way that would happen right away, not with what Denise was led to believe, and where life had taken her.

The orphanage that took Denise in was unaware of what had happened. All they knew was that a baby was left in a hospital in bad condition. With no contact with the family, they allowed Denise to be adopted by the American couple that Denise would call mom and dad for the next 40 years.

Denise also learned that after she visited South Korea and entered her DNA in the government program, her mother did the same a year later in 2017. It seems like it was meant to be, as thousands of South Korean adoptees may never find a match for one reason or another.

All her life, Denise thought she was left behind, but there her family was, relieved to finally find her after so many decades of searching. She now knew that the only things that separated them were international borders, and none of them could wait to cross over.

The reunited family made plans to see each other in person following the end of the pandemic. They even have their sights on vacation time together in Hawaii. As tragic as the story has been, they're just happy to be together again. Denise finally feels less alone, especially with a twin who's just like her.

Denise shares that "she and her twin sister don’t just look alike, but they also have the same voice, like the same colors and foods, love traveling and have the same sense of humor." As amazing as it was to meet with them, she was saddened by the absences of her grandmother and father. However, the optimistic family looked at the loss in a happier light.

"I know he was there in spirit because I think that he just made this happen and I think that my maternal grandmother [who] lost us that day... I know she was there as well. I could just tell", shared Denise. For her, finding them brings her a feeling of completeness, "To have that missing piece of what happened to me is just incredibly overwhelming and happy and it makes me feel whole.”

As much as this had meant for her, Denise hasn't forgotten about her adoptive parents. She wants them and her biological family to meet, because they are all a part of her loving family now. “I’ve just got this huge family now that loves me and that I love," she said. "You can’t be happier than that. You can’t ask for more than that.” And everyone was fascinated to learn what the other half of their big family was up to.

The similarities between Denise and her twin sparked a lively conversation. Whenever we look at family members who grow up in different circumstances, nature versus nurture always lingers in the background. Some say inherited genes play a bigger role than life experiences in determining our health, while others claim the opposite. These two schools of thought have been at odds for decades.

People that firmly believe that our genetic codes predetermine all human characteristics — without any influence by our outside environments — are called nativists. That means our outcomes are evolutionary, passed down from generations. In the other corner?

Then there are the people who say human characteristics are shaped by our circumstances. It's our senses and experiences that determine our outcomes. According to empiricists, traits are dependent on factors like where you live, how you behave, or what you do.

There's the nature genetics people, the nurture environment-based people, and then a third group that believes maybe humans traits are determined by both. Agreeing to a compromise works for most problems, but this debate isn't just for argument's sake. There are real consequences for choosing the wrong side.

For parents, nature versus nurture begs the question — how much influence do you have in shaping my children? In general, people are curious about how much of ourselves can be blamed on genetics and how much to blame on our environments.

Obviously, the jokiness of the blame game isn't the main incentive behind figuring out the puzzle of nature versus nurture. Understanding how much or little is predetermined by genetics or by potentially controllable environmental factors has many critical benefits.

There's a glaring advantage of cracking the nature versus nurture code — research, treatment, and prevention for an endless amount of diseases and conditions. If scientists pinpoint a common factor for a terminal illness, then society can work to address it.

For instance, if experts found out an environmental factor, like economic status, resulted in a higher percentage of a specific kind of cancer, then more time, energy, and resources could be funneled into prevention for those at risk. And that's just one of the thousands of potential outcomes.

So what are the negative consequences of incorrectly choosing either nature over nurture? Time, energy, and resources are wasted by researching the wrong avenues for worthless solutions. When it comes to solving terminal illnesses and saving lives, scientists need to pinpoint the truth.

In order to better understand the hot debates surrounding nature vs. nurture, scientists rely on twins. Twins are great subjects of study due to their matching genetic codes, so observing the effects of environmental impacts is much easier. The studies are fascinating.

As Professor Tim Spector of Kings College, London, explained to Smithsonian Magazine, both identical and fraternal twins are crucial candidates for scientific study because, without them, we wouldn’t be capable of natural human experimentation.

Researcher Beben Benyamin of the University of Queensland said, “Twin studies have been conducted for more than 50 years, but there is still some debate in terms of how much the variation is due to genetic or environmental factors.” 

In recent years, scientists made headway in the research of nature versus nurture like never before. Experts combed through fifty years worth of twin studies, which spanned 17,800 different human traits. In the end, they felt confident they’d found an answer.

After looking at twin studies from the past half-century, scientists from Queensland Brain Institute and VU University of Amsterdam made a definitive conclusion. When it comes to how much is determined by genetics and how much is shaped by environment factors — there was a tie!

Take the versus out of the equation because both nature and nurture are too important to ignore. Comparing everything from psychiatric disorders to genetic diseases, while some traits are more influenced by genetics and other more by environment, all traits were still sufficiently influenced by both.

University of Pennsylvania Professor Rebecca Waller gave a good example of how nature and nurture work in conjunction. If a child is born with the right genetic combination to be a good reader, then parents might pick up on that early aptitude and shape the environment to encourage it.

All the studies used fall under the category of classical twin design. That means that the near-matching genetic patterns of identical twins were compared to the only 50% matching genetic codes of fraternal twins. These sorts of studies have one easily identifiable benefit.

If the testing trait, like a disease, is more prevalent in fraternal twins, that indicates a higher environmental risk factor. Every day, twins help scientists solve many of life’s greatest problems, most recently, to learn more about the deadly virus COVID-19.

NASA has observed astronauts and identical twins Scott and Mark Kelly to gauge the long term effects of exposure to space. After Scott returned from a 340-day stint on the International Space Station, the brothers provided body fluid samples and took a series of tests.