The most salient marker in my life begins with my status as a First Generation Korean Adoptee having been adopted in the late 1950’s by White American parents.  My adoption has affected my life tremendously in both known and unknown ways.  Also prominent in my self-identity is my membership in the Queer community as a bisexual woman. 

I am currently in a long term committed relationship with a White man.  This relationship at various and frequent times both enriches and enrages my life and sensibilities.  I am a mother of one adult child who is the best daughter a mother could ever hope for.  She has three children which makes me a Grammie three times over. 

A change in career puts me in the category of a non-traditional (surprise!) student and I earned my doctoral degree in clinical psychology this year.  I will begin my 12-month postdoctoral fellowship in September, 2008.  My career prior to this transition was as a contract paralegal working in civil law. 

My clinical areas of expertise are:   adoption (with particular emphasis working with adoptees in their adulthood), issues of race and class, Queer population, women’s issues, mid-life to late-life concerns, and alcohol/substance abuse.  

My hobbies and interests include adoption issues, garage sales (aka GS’ing), cooking, new agey kind of stuff, daily minutia, my familia, reading, writing - poetry and creative non-fiction, race & class issues, gardening, creating art, and walking - especially with loved ones.  A few of my favorite reads are The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk, anything written by Alice Hoffman, The Paperboy by Pete Dexter, The Language of Blood by Jane Jeong Trenka, Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, Turning Japanese by David Mura, Yellow Raft on Blue Water by Michael Dorris, Kent Haruf’s work, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, and my very own creative non-fiction and poetry.

Finally, the title of this blog is a reminder to myself of my daily choice of either allowing life’s challenges to wear me down or letting them gently slide off me like rivulets of water.  I like to think that the drops have smoothed my rough edges, like a smooth stone, allowing me to tumble along with life’s tides and eddies more freely.  Plus, spying an upturned duck butt in a pond is a sure fire way of making me smile, no matter what my original mood.