My first KAAN Conference! & life updates (KAD Blog #4)

… how do I even start this blog post…?

So…. I went to KAAN… a huge conference for KADs and others from the larger adoptive diaspora. This whole experience has been absolutely life changing. Grab a snack and lets go!

Pre-COnference (thoughts/feelings)

When I decided to buy my tickets to KAAN; I honestly had no idea what to expect. Was this going to be just seminars that I even related to at all? Would the people be nice and would my experience be different than my last experiences with KADS? (years ago, I had very negative experiences with other KADS that made me not want to interact in the community- more on this in another future post). I honestly prepared for the worst, and hoped for the best. I spent a lot of time parsing through my personal feelings and just went with the mentality of “its ok if this ends up poorly, at least I tried”. When the conference got closer and closer; I started to think about all of the more normal social anxiety things like “Will I find any friends?” or “what if everyone has cliques already?”

Getting to the airport, all of those anxieties went away. I had this very good feeling about the conference and I ended up having an amazing conversation with the family on my flight.

Conference experience

Quite honestly, its taken me this long (months) to write this blog entry because the experience was truly life changing in a way I couldn’t put into words. When I first got to the hotel / conference I was immediately surrounded by other adoptees and I felt like I was home. Meeting other adoptees for the first time in my life, I was overwhelmed with emotions ranging from excted, to nervous, to wishing I had adoptee friends growing up.

I attended many sessions that impacted my outlook on the adoptee experience more than I thought would happen. I didn’t know that I would end up sharing as much as I did either, but as soon as I got to those sessions, and heard other people’s experiences and it made me realize I wanted to share my experiences to give more context and show solidarity with others who were really putting themselves out there. I was able to finally start confronting a lot of the lived experiences that resulted in trauma & I made many realizations and connections between my core being and adoption (people pleasing, abandonment, never feeling like I’m enough, etc).

Overall, the community I was able to build and the people I ended up meeting have became not only friends, but my chosen family. The KAAN experience is something I will do yearly as it really was that transformative.

Post KAAN Processing & Life updates.

For about 2 months, I didn’t even think about KAAN because I honestly didn’t even know HOW to process what I just went through- I started writing this blog and never finished because I was feeling too much about the whole experience. There were so many realizations made, that it felt like I had zoomed out on my life and was able for the first time- to see every connection, thread, and detail about my soul. Its been transformative, and overwhelming- to say the least; it’s made me much more empathetic towards myself and now I can truly love all of myself because of the ability to say “its not your fault, its your trauma”. I feel like I’m a whole person, instead of fragments of a person, if that makes any sense.

The post-KAAN blues were truly real as I was back to normal life with being one of the only asian people within the music community. I missed that community that I had formed, but I realized feasably I wouldn’t be able to handle keeping all of the connections with the people I met. The way I go about friendships is a little different- I’m very, very busy so the relationships I form must be strong and flow super easily. I much rather have one or two amazing friends than 10 or 15 acquaintances. That being said, I have a couple of humans that I truly connected with on the level where I will consider them my chosen family- all thanks to KAAN.

After I got home, I immediately had to woodshed for my upcoming August-October tour. That was one of the reasons I didn’t process a lot of things until later, and didn’t get around to writing this blog entry. A lot of the adoptee experience is not feeling like “enough” - through the last few years I have struggled with feeling like I’m ever “good enough”; its been a huge challenge because we all know musicians are their own greatest critics. My work ethic is what truly sets me apart from other musicians in Nashville; and I believe this is one of the aspects of the adoption experience that is a double edged sword. I would go work at 3rd Power four days a week, 10 hours a day- and after work (6:30pm)- practice until 10:30 and then go to bed. Fridays- Sundays were 12 hour legitimate practice days. I would wake up, shower, and lock myself in my studio until I nailed whatever I was after. This work ethic made my playing absolutely EXPLODE for touring and gave me the edge I needed for how demanding life on the road was going to be.

But.. I felt like life passed me by this year. I was so hyper-critical of my playing and the amount of work I needed to put in to be “perfect” that I would not let myself be a normal human being for all of those months. While my playing exploded, I was finding that I was also not as satisfied and happy with my mentality towards playing.

Then tour…

3 months passed by… I played my ASS off at these shows, but what I realized through this experience out on the road is..

I wasn’t feeling fufilled musically and creatively…. So there are new endeavors on the horizon. I will be releasing an “all stars” project with an EP releasing next year featuring incredible players. Think Van Halen meets Extreme

overall. thankful, happy, and very, VERY excited for whats to come in the next year of my existence :)